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POEMS OF PERSONALITY 

THIRD SERIES 



POEMS 

OF 

PERSONALITY 

THIRD SERIES . 

REGINALD cy'ROBBlNS 




— "to speak beyond the booh " 



CAMBRIDGE 

1917 



5 




COPYRIGHT, 1917, BY REGINALD CHAUNCKY ROBBINS 
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 



C:iA 



84321 



^w 1 5 m 






'^ 

o 

^" CONTENTS 

HOMER 3 

JOB 8 

ISAIAH 14 

DEMOCRITUS 21 

VERGIL 31 

JOHN THE BAPTIST 35 

PHILO 38 

MARCUS AURELIUS 50 

PLOTINUS 58 

ORIGEN 75 

JULIAN 87 

PELAGIUS 91 

CHARLEMAGNE 96 

ERIGENA 100 

ABELARD 105 

BERNARD OF CLAIRVAUX 112 

iii 



CONTENTS 

FRANCIS OF ASSISI 117 

FREDERICK II, HOHENSTAUFEN . . . 123 

VILLON 129 

CHARLES V 137 

BACH 144 

FICHTE 153 

SCHOPENHAUER 159 

LINCOLN 178 

WAGNER 182 

GLADSTONE 196 

BRAHMS 208 

NIETZSCHE 216 

ROYCE 224 



HOMER 

The mighty morning wakes! Earth, heaven and 

ocean 
Leap to the touch of sweet, swift-footed light 
Adown yon orient atmosphere dawn-dancing. 
Quick-shafted from the Asian mountain-ridge 
Distant upon the lordly continent ! 
And this green isle with cliffs surf-circled standeth, 
A gem amid the many-murmuring waters, 
White-ring'd with the wine-wonder of the sea. 
And ever 'twixt mine isle and that far shore 
The shimmering wind-rows of the wave advancing 
Come gleaming onward at a wide approach. 
Feeding the eye of the mind with impulse urgent 
(Out of the new-born day and fountain'd Ida, 
Out of the swift-oncoming air and ocean 
Or hither-streaming, sweet, quick-footed light) 
To sing to-day once more, as many a day 
I sang; as none before mine hour have sung-it 
In palace or in herdsman's hut, in ship 
On ocean beaten or the rocky place 
Of some high altar mountainward; to sing 
The strife of men and gods (sith gods impel 

3 



POEMS OF PERSONALITY 

And alway shall impel the light of morning, 
The sweep of the air and ocean's foamy rage 
Storm-stricken), to sing of ancient, mighty men 
Like ocean, air and earth high-powerful 
Yet in a strife the gods had stirr'd them to 
Shatter'd and suffering, wasted through the years 
(Unless in suffering be best herohood!) 
Like as a day were wasted when no song 
Issues from lips upon the promontory 
Nor paean at the dawn-tide poureth on 
The hurrying impulse wine-hued of the wave! 
For, many a year, told I the tale of Troia 
And of the hero-wanderer seeking home 
Against Poseidon, Troia being destroy'd. 
In Chios singing who was youthful then 
And hale, but now (an aged man white-hair'd) 
Feel, by the morning-wind in northern Lesbos, 
The singing-hour upon me once again ! — 
Thou, Zeus, hast felt as when Homeros singeth: 
When from thy front full-arm'd Athene sprang 
(Goddess of couraged foresight to the strife) 
Perchance at morning, when the silver shafts 
Of Phoibos through thine high Olympian hall 
Woke thee to rapture and thou borest her! 
4 



HOMER 

O Zeus, in imitation of thy glory 
The dawn hath call'd me to create for men 
In mine old-age as in mine hours of youth 
A music of the elements, a splendor 
Of song-burst to be flung o'er world awide 
In voice of the bard chanting the woven tale — 
New combats and new triumphs and new woes 
Which men may sing mix'd with the former chants 
Nor guess thereby the maker were grown old ! 
And, though the fate be dire as is the strife 
Through the long day and unto Hades' end. 
Yet all is of the morning in my mind 
(However aged be the race of men) 
Singing the hero-working though we die ! 
Doubtless there shall be songs of evening heard; 
And songs of noon-tide when the heavier blue 
Broods o'er an ocean swooning in the sun 
Heedless of gods or men or hero-strife. 
Calm, harmless as a tether'd sacrifice — 
And they be otherwise than Asia's now 
Of blaze and starting forth to the day's fate. 
And doubtless may bewilderment ensue 
To men not born of morning, wondering then 
How that Homeros sang as then they'd sing not; 
5 



POEMS OF PERSONALITY 

And, finding in Homeros not their own 
Noon-moveless ocean of the heedless gleam 
Nor terrors troublous of an evening eye, 
Shall blame and call me blind! But am I blind, 
O Zeus, who stand upon my promontory 
In Lesbos near to Troas (where I came 
Yearning from Chios for the winds of Ida) 
With open'd lips and couraged, steadfast gaze 
Ever to eastward at the opening day 
Taking thine instigation; whilst from Ida 
That looks upon the Trojan northward plain, 
Skamandros* flood and shores where heroes fell 

* 

Sweeps ever over the wine-faced, rustling sea 
Coming and coming as in foam-row borne 
The wind of inspiration, thine Athene 
(Foresighted to the tumult of the strife, 
Sustaining in the hero each resource) 
Who gives the impulse to the mounting mind 
And makes in me the morning yet of men? 
Nay, Zeus; nor are they blind who follow after 
With music of a lyre though earth be old. 
Old; and the race of men white-hair'd as I ! 
Not blind are they who, though the noon be duU'd 
With hot oppression or the pallid glare 
6 



HOMER 

Of Hades-ominous clouds black-piled along 
The margin of a westward ocean bode 
A night too starless, find within the mind 
Still thine Athene, still a morning-strength 
Than mine the loftier that it singeth yet 
Though days and years of element are pass'd 
And Troia be forgotten with my name; 
And men no more be striving. Yea, O Zeus, 
Though all were heedless of thee, or all despair'd 
Thine orient turning, never shouldst thou fail 
At last (the appointed dawn-tide hour at hand) 
In wind of inspiration, thine Athene, 
As now to urge upon their voicelessness 
A song from out the spirit; which, suffering. 
Yet striveth hero wise; which seeth earth 
As no earth were without thee — though the eye 
Be sightless, sightless: even as mine own! 



JOB 

Not by the Voice shall I be overcome. 
Not by the overbearingness of God 
Subdued; where power, domineering still. 
Disdains all justice! Shall I be reduced 
(And after endurance of such manifold. 
Unmerited agonies!) by mere rebuke 
In bluster of the tempest, to succumb 
In spirit as in body — and be dust. 
No longer questioning, no longer Man? 
I grant the ways of the Lord, inscrutable! 
I grant the injustice, not to be explain'd! 
Yet will not acquiesce and turn for Him 
A minister of monstrous wantonness 
Unstirr'd of nobler promptings. God or Man, 
I still must choose between them and elect 
(Ah! even the dust but would be questioning!) 
The juster, though mine agony abide 
Fourfold the vengeance of the unjust Judge, 
'Soever mighty to devour me up 
With wrath and whirlwind: who His wrath insult! 
Ah, Lord! not thus shalt Thou o'erpower the man 
By taunt and boasting, though Behemoth too 
8 



JOB 

(However halfway mighty up to Thee!) 

Moan and Leviathan beweep Thy strength! 

If with Behemoth and Leviathan 

I suffer, so my steadfast sympathy 

For sufferance tormented of Thy hand 

Doubly defies Thee for the brotherhood ! 

Lo! dost Thou spur the Horse to rush on spears. 

Put madness in his nostrils at the sound 

Of trumpet and by battle him destroy. 

Him and the captains trusting in his might — 

And Thine to aid the righteous, nor betray? 

Lo! the Gazel upon the sparsest weed 

Thou starvest, that beneath the fire at last 

Of desert drouth her fever may be flame 

And that same speed. Thou gavest her to keep her. 

Wither and waste before the javelin? 

Behemoth also he at last must fall 

Alone, beyond the help of any arm 

Than Thine — and dost Thou save him with Thy 

strength? 
Or dost Thou watch him all-unpityingly 
Gasp out the great gasps, or Leviathan 
Drown in the flood that Thou hadst made for him: 
Drown and be carcass rotted on the strand 

9 



POEMS OF PERSONALITY 

To heaven high-stinking, when one turn or touch 
Of Thy least finger had sustained him? 
Jehovah! Thou hast against Thee many a charge 
Of heaviest obloquy: Who may'st, but will'st not; 
Who canst all things for good yet workest ill! 
And by the Voice of One all-powerful 
But all-unjust shall I be overcome? 

Ah, God! to force me thus into defiance 

Most miserable to the meekness of me: 

The worst if last of Thine injustices. 

Because preventing me from reverence 

As Thou from pity long hast been absolved; 

Goading me from my posture of a patience 

Submissive still if questioning! That now 

From any more injustice I escape 

(And with me Thy creation. Beast and Man!) 

By rising up in judgment: I, at worst, 

A judge over my Maker, face to face! 

I tell Thee, Lord ! 't is Thou Who must be judged, 

If I am but Thine image, face to face. 

So capable of judgment even as Thou! 

I tell Thee, God! that I will be Thy judge — 

10 



JOB 

Yet justly, very justly, lest Thy fault 

Repeat in me Thy creature. For Thy fault 

Is very grievous as I know Thee now 

Convicted out of Thine own voice and boast 

Of fashioning a world in wantonness. 

Thou might'st have pleaded of some power above 

Thee 
Thwarting Thy will for well; Thou might'st have 

shown me 
Some compensation to my misery 
By justice otherwhere through my great wrong. 
Thou pleadedst not, but boastedst of these things. — 
I grant Thy ways were erst inscrutable 
Anent injustice plainly to be known: 
The injustice proven, not to be explain'd. 
Nor now might Thine injustice be explain'd 
In this its worst compulsion to revolt — 
Unless, unless high humanhood compell'd 
Of Thy misdeed, Man's scrupulosity 
In fear of imaging his Maker's fault. 
This better-than-mere-justice speaking now 
Be Thy supreme achievement, pardoning all 
The dire arraignment drawn of Thine own lips? 
For, God! I even in my misery here 

II 



POEMS OF PERSONALITY 

Grieve for Behemoth and Leviathan, 

For Horse and Doe (not to discourse of pains 

On other men inflicted; nor of Thee 

To pity Thine injustice!); I in pain 

Unspeakable yet speak at risk of life 

(A life how gladly render'd up to Thee; 

Save for this zeal, first to defend Thy fame 

By seeking explanation of my woe 

Against false explanation of the Friends, 

And now to acquit Thee in Thine own despite!). 

Yet argue, at the risk of death, with Thee 

The Omnipotent in Evil, but to prove 

Thy world, if half-unwittingly to Thee, 

A work of splendor, that Thy morning-stars 

Which sang together sang not wantonly! 

How were it. Lord! that Thou couldst make such 

men 
As judge Thee not ungenerously, though 
They suffer with the anguish of thine earth? 
Perchance Thou feelest too the fate of all; 
And pitiest, deserving so my pity. 
Most poignantly because Thou madest them 
To bear with Thee in patience more-than-just. 
To judge of Thee in generosity; 

12 



JOB 

And knowest the glory of Thy handiwork: 

Thyself almost as Man, to glory in it? 

What were my vindication beyond death. 

Which could not reach Thee as the Lord of Life, 

To this that vindicateth Thee by me? — 

Speak to me, Thou ! declare Thou unto me. 

If that the secret of the universe 

Be Thine; and mine but counsel without knowledge! 

Art Thou now silent, whilst upon my tongue 

Trembles the explanation of Thy ways 

Their problem and perplexity to man: 

The way of pity, that Thou madest us. 

And feelest with the creatures Thou hast made 

The pangs of Thine injustice and the glory 

Of human generosity to Thee 

(Proving of Thee Thy wise creatorship. 

The saving immolation of Thy pride!) 

Beyond all meekness, as I judge Thee now? 

Lord! for Thy silence, I submit to Thee! 



13 



ISAIAH 

In God's sight and in man's the chastisement 
Of Ephraim beneath the conqueror's yoke 
Is just; fulfilment of a prophesying 
Long spoken, openly the hand of God: 
That Ephraim sweats and groans with ox and ass. 
Doing hard labor in an alien land 
As erst in Egypt. Yea, the doom is just. 
For Ephraim, was she not idolatrous. 
Allied with Syria and Damascus' gods 
(Whether the idols be Jehovah call'd 
Or Baal what heed, when God is not of stone?) 
A nation of backsliders; save a few 
Who, fiery-tongued and of the lips of God 
Inspired, spake for Him over overtly 
(Hosea, Amos and the mightier twain) 
Denouncing idols, Asshur equally 
With Baal though Jehovah's instrument 
Be Asshur to Samaria's overthrow? 
And, where the warning of the prophet-tongues 
Against reliance on the heathen strength 
Of Baal, Syria and Damascus' cult 
Was no more heeded than the twitter of birds; 
14 



ISAIAH 

And idol-priests within, without the land. 

In Ephraim as in Syria, mock'd the more; 

There shall not vast Assyrian hosts destroy 

And rape into an exile righteously 

The people, so to purge by fire and spear 

The unclean high-places? And, though here and 

yon 
Be one or two fair sheaves amid the tares 
Enmesh'd in field-wide ruin, shall not God 
By riddance root and branch prepare the ground 
Best for repentance and the remnant-growth 
If any shall remain in His good time? 

Ah, Judah! Judah! have I not said Woe! 
Woe! unto Ephraim with terrible speech 
Of chastisement impending — and when now 
Their punishment approveth prophecy 
And mine appointment from Jehovah stands 
Before the tribes made plain, shall I, in this ] 
Mine hour of vindication from the taunts 
(From Ephraim or from Judah snarling out 
In fierce refusal to allow the truth 
For fear of doom or horror at the fate). 
In mine exoneration from the taunts 
15 



POEMS OF PERSONALITY 

Of prosperous unrighteousness, deplore 

The glory of the justice of our God? 

Their doom is just; and God is on my side 

Against the scoffers — and shall I denounce 

Mine inspiration and repent of God? 

Ah, God! could not Thy power have forced Thy 

folk, 
Those children of the covenant, to care 
For Thee and for Thy warning nor compel 
The realization of such prophecies? 
Ah, God! could not Thy servant, even I, 
Have suffer'd, as a scapegoat unto Thee, 
For every sin of Ephraim; that they 
Thy flock, my brethren still for all their fault. 
Had turn'd unto repentance — and bewray'd 
My speech, mine insight and my service for Thee 
By sheer anticipation, spoiling all 
Of warning by the punishment forestall'd? 
God, I would vouch to Thee, even I, Thy clay. 
Would vouch to Thee for Ephraim, wouldst Thou 
But cancel inspiration, leave me proved 
Blasphemer — if but yon Assyrian host 
Were from the waste-lands of Samaria 
And from their fastnesses to north and east 
i6 



ISAIAH 

Cast out; and Ephraim in prosperity 
Return'd and once more vineyarded of home! 
Behold ! if but some fear Thou hadst vouchsafed 
Unto their souls (not anger at my words!) 
That, Syrian Damascus left alone 
To overthrow by those Assyrian hosts, 
Scorning a dalHance with the heathen gods 
Their feet had turn'd unto Thy righteousness 
And so been saved by my false prophesying! 

Ah! then had I been more Thy prophet, more 
(Though in disgrace) the worker in Thy field; 
Then, then, by the spectacle of downfall yielden 
(It dawns upon me I should serve Thee so 
More than by confirmation of Thy pledge!) 
For every high intent within my spirit. 
An evidence of God-nobility 
Beyond mere mulct and wage, example to them 
(Dread Lord! example haply too to Thee!) 
Of best desert precluded from reward. 
Of loftiest merit openly denied 
And Thy world-power frustrate seemingly — 
Nay, frustrate, O Jehovah, veritably — 
Unless a loftier than justice rule 
17 



POEMS OF PERSONALITY 

Thy world and generosity have shape 
Within Thy heart and will, as in mine own 
The generosity of huge regret 
Hath birth beside my triumph. Ah, for Judah, 
Where yet the Assyrian conqueror abstains. 
Be generous, God ! oh, wreak on me Thy wrath 
If by mine uttermost discrediting 
Thy meting-out of judgment be forsworn 
To nobler purposes, to leading-on 
Not by the chastisement but, as in me 
By opening of the bowels of compassion. 
The travails of a sympathy with Thee 
In Thy new part of Healer, saviorhood 
Which needeth not the surfeit-hemorrhage 
To force the fruit of pity purgative! 
O great Jehovah ! wreck but my career. 
Destroy this prophet-reputation with 
The basis of the justice-prophesying 
(For generosity can none foretell !) ; 
Purge and prevent Thy people ere the fact 
Of God-establishment by ruin of them ! 
For am not 1, Thy servant, one alone, 
A prophet crying in the wilderness; 
And are not they. Thy people, many thousands; 
18 



ISAIAH 

And wert not Thou, O Lord, the greater God 
For dwelHng in the heart and soul and strength 
Of thousands glad at home (a fellowship 
Of prophets as the heart shall speak for Thee 
In confidence beyond the need of foresight!), 
Of thousands Thine for love; not in the fear — 
The hate — of a poor people laboring 
(Some remnant of them) in a stranger-land 
With ox and ass beneath the burden of 
A conqueror who knoweth not Thy name? 
And 1, Thy servant, if Thou anywise 
Troublest at my discredit and disgrace. 
Comfort Thyself that I shall ever praise Thee, 
Praising Thee but the more should justice fail 
And generosity in Thee awake 
To my destruction. As* Samaria now 
In this her ruin'd silence privily 
Should I endure it, nor disturb Thy peace 
With any lamentation. For the truth 
That I the last, and no man after me. 
Should perish of Thy justice, such a truth 
(Thou wouldst allow the foresight finally !) 
Though I be sawn asunder in Thy courts 
(And, shouldst but Thou present the paradigm, 
19 



POEMS OF PERSONALITY 

Then in Thine image might men pardon me) 
The sense of such a truth as man's salvation 
And spirit-softening at Thy forgiveness 
Would lift my spirit to the mountain-tops 
Vocal above the valleys with Thy feet ! 



20 



DEMOCRITUS 

Like as the myriad atoms of the sands 

So small, so tough that nought may cut nor crush 

Nor anywise effect diminishment 

In any of them — like the desert sands 

Here of Aigyptos 'neath my wandering feet 

(These grains in curious shapes indeed diverse) 

Lieth the first material of the world. 

The substance of the prime necessity, 

As though in this hot sunshine wide and whole 

Declared, to reasonings illuminate. 

Of myriad truths composed the substance holdeth; 

Things real; alone in primal shape unlike; 

And in such sorts unlike — as primal shape. 

Affording to sense and so to human act 

Derivative reality indeed. 

Doubtless may gender of the impact of them 

(Which sensuous characters Protagoras, 

Though scarce Leukippos, hath provided for!) — 

As can, for seeming to a human sense, 

By doubtful parlance of the modern mood 

Be added of the mind. Though ultimately 

(Leukippos, scarce Protagoras, in this!) 

21 



POEMS OF PERSONALITY 

Are the atoms, so I deem them, as they are 

(The shaping first assumed) so wholly like 

In kind each unto each that utmost search 

(Like mine upon the face of the desert here) 

Might nowise set apart as other-sorted 

One grain of the world from other — ay, save in size. 

Itself from absolute form derivative: 

As desert sands, though each as each too small 

For diminution, yet are size-unlike. 

Some smaller and some larger in themselves. 

That thus in size and weight (derivative 

From primal form, I know) may difference be 

Real, toward our purposes of thought 

To be relied upon as given to it 

(Though reasonable; yet alogical, 

Not sensuous-added of the mind!), among 

Things utterly substantial each from each. 

Nor need we any other truths assumed 
Than these of atomism, the tough, the small. 
The several indeed of shape and size 
But otherwise an homogeneousness. 
For all beside is sensuously derived. 
Logic-related, added of the mind 

22 



DEMOCRITUS 

As 't were, and therefore not approvable; 

Ay, therefore not thus for first philosophy! 

Ah, here as I stand upon the desert plains 

I thus define their full reality, 

Sands, sands and sands, beneath diminishment 

Or multiplication; myriads, each too small 

And all too many for intrinsic change; 

And therefore, though no All of Elea, 

Yet nothing like the Dream of Ephesos! 

The shimmering of the sun-fire well may seem 

Sand-alteration; or the desert air 

May hang in the margin of the open heavens 

Tall palms and glimmering pools of phantasy. 

But these no more than falsehoods of the tongue 

Are for the physic-search of human wisdom 

A reasonable substance. At my feet 

Lie sands and sands, a multiplicity 

(Declared to reasoning of the high sunshine) 

Unwavering save to figment of the sense. 

And yet, unlike the All of Elea, 

Substantial, not in virtue overall 

Of vague enlargement unto boundlessness. 

But rather because thus utterly minute 

In every element-identity; 

23 



POEMS OF PERSONALITY 

Sands, sands, in truth; a waste as but by naming 

(Beware the stagnant void of Elea!), 

No stagnant void, but capable, each grain. 

If scarce of an ultimate alterance to sense 

Yet, in a truth ulterior to sense. 

Of motion; ay, not, as sang Parmenides, 

A very palm-hung pool of phantasy, 

A glimmering merely, but, itself instinct 

With potence and the making of the worlds; 

A source-of-all-sensation veritable, 

A matrix to the modelling of mind. 

Not unrelated to the acts of men. 

Yet one thing more! Behold the acts of men 
(Which for Parmenides were mystery; 
Yea, for Leukippos, dubiously described 
Without or source or service veritable) 
Themselves, as shown us of Protagoras 
If not of Herakleitos, motionwise — 
And thus derivatively of the Real — 
Resembling any act mechanical 
Whether of sand or atom! I may walk 
Foot-firm upon these granules. I may stoop 
And lift, in the hand, of them a multitude 
24 



DEMOCRITUS 

Sifting the desert-substance myriadwise, 
To winnow them high-held above mine head 
Like seed from chaff. And Hl<e to chaff or seed 
Sandward upon the plain the sands pour down 
In never-ceasing impulse, every speck 
Seeking intent its fellows. Yet isolate 
Each falleth, some the swiftlier for their size; 
Some softlier, widely streaming on the breeze 
Dust-fashion: yet fitless either, whilst between them 
The interstice, the vacuum obtains 
Without which motion were not. For were world 
Pack'd tight and full-composed and fitted well. 
How were a cosmos but a merest grain, 
Incapable of compressions, yielding not 
To severations, and internally 
Like to the desert-floor too still-compact, 
Inertive! Whence, betwixt the grains of the world 
Be equal-myriad holes permitting motion 
Though real ! And my motion or their own 
Alike is thuswise valent, as I deem. 
By dint of the vacuum, such aperture 
Betwixt the atoms of the primal mode 
Permitting the translation. Might my feet 
Pursue and press-upon the firm-pack'd path 

25 



POEMS OF PERSONALITY 

Further and further from the valley-green 
(Where sense-affection so confuseth truth!) 
Of Neilos and along the drifted edge 
Of these sand-billows (bare of feeling-claim, 
So reason-fostering!), save there gave to the swing 
Of the foot an opening in the tenuous air 
For entrance and for passage of my frame 
Parting the ghostlier presence? Might my hand 
Find fmger-space below the surface-dust 
And deep within these granules, were not cranny 
And crevice ever betwixt grain and grain 
Lurking to lend fluidity? Betwixt 
The myriad prime-substantial particles 
Thus must there lurk of prime necessity. 
Not merely as a fiction of the mind 
(For ever must we deny Parmenides!) 
An emptiness, a failure each to fit 
Its neighbor grain; an absolute negative 
Which equally with atom (though denial — 
And 'atom' haply too were negative 
Whilst positive of cosmic import aye?) 
Were prime and uttermost necessity, 
A matrix unto substance, even as substance 
Were matrix to sensation-imagery; 
26 



DEMOCRITUS 

, That so through vacuum, the inter-void 
(Even as by substance is sensation founded) 
The opportunity to worlds is given 
For inner motion and new attitude. 
For very difference of shape and size. — 
O desert, art thou not as vacuum 
A sand-denial, yet an unity 
Holding in severance and thus in truth 
The sands of ultimate substance? For the truth 
Of vacuum takes hold upon the mind 
To admiration. And Parmenides 
(If in a meaning someway not the same?) 
His universal emptiness hath warrant. 
And 1 am of the desert stultified 
Who gloried in the sand-grain ! Shall my mind 
Be modell'd as to an emptiness, an One 
Elean, despised and yet proved matrix to it? 
Or may there be, as Anaxagoras 
(Or new-come Sokrates) in sort hath said, 
A way of constitution in our thought 
Scarce yielding as to a name, a phantasy. 
Though yet ignoring not the paradox 
That presseth on the reason? There be sands. 
Atoms substantial, all-innumerable 
27 



POEMS OF PERSONALITY 

And all-alike; and there be likewise this 
The desert call'd, the absolute nothingness. 
The vacuum but in which, by which, alone 
In virtue of whose barren breadth, the sands 
Are several, ultimate, atomic proven! 

I question if a paradox so posed 

Be explicable, as with Sokrates 

(Nor by Protagoras the elder-born. 

For whom no truth were weightier than a name!). 

By inference merely to a property 

Call'd desertness, a several ty-in-space. 

Held as in common of the atom-facts. 

For how might wearying distance so obtain 

Whereto, wherethrough, wherefrom my wandering 

feet 
May journey, were the multiplicity 
Itself extended as by property 
Of every point the same and nought between 
For journey? How might alterance inly be 
Where nought obtains of ultimate otherness 
Save what our thought may from all truths alike 
Express, extract as oil but from the fruit 
Of palm or olive? Though indeed, perchance, 
28 



DEMOCRITUS 

Might substance (even as wholly positive) 
In every part self-differently intend 
An inference, whether of the interstice 
Or neighbor-distant granule, through-and-through : 
Even as our mind, with truth shot through-and- 
through 
(Whatever her falsity of imagery 
Sensuous-sprung of overt eye and ear!), 
Containeth, ay, or seems so to contain 
Both desert and the myriad-motived sands 
Whilst, whatsoe'er her physic-base of being. 
Not to herself atomic nor a name? 
I know not, what of Anaxagoras 
Might hold within a land of sensuous fruits 
(A cosmos-scheme of relativities !) 
Bewildering thus the reason, to confuse 
In complications of interpretance 
To purposes anthropomorphic-felt 
Truths true-distinct! But here there are no fruits 
(Nought save sands' multiple presence unto touch 
In primal demonstration — nay, no fruits). 
No facts of sensuous, secondary sights 
Or sounds of the mind — as yonder sky-hung waters. 
In phantasy mayhap, may be referr'd 

29 



POEMS OF PERSONALITY 

(So fain I 'd understand Parmenides) 
To impacts of the atoms whilst none less 
Of mind contributed! But mine the problem 
Of reason face to face with ultimate truths. 
The vacuous extension, different-held 
In every interstice, nowise atomic 
And yet essential to the atoms each 
Their ultimate severalty! Mine the problem 
Of sands here in their myriads where I stoop 
And lift and sift them all with weight imbued, 
Fragments and fragments, several over the face 
(As wandering, ghostlier airs by chance define) 
Of the drifted desert which my feet press hard 
In passing over; passing only sands 
And sands still of the desert-formative. — 
One comes to wisdom in Aigyptos here 
Where showeth the primal aspect of all things, 
World's very paradox-necessity; 
Baffling the reason: which remains yet wide 
And whole as sunshine, open, unconfused 
Because distinctively both elements 
In reasonable zeal illuminate 
Confronting unmistaken: neither truth 
Mistaken for a meaning of the mind! 
30 



VERGIL 

Muse, from Rome's magnificence I haste me 
And splendors of imperial temples, toward 
Thine open countryside and rustic altar. 

To serve thee as I may and them the gods 
Who dwell not under the porch in city walls. 
For Jove is of the open heavens and spreads 
His mantle and the carpet of his throne 
Not only over the fora but about 
The tender and gracious circlet of a sky 
That Cometh down along the mountain-side 
Purplish at noon-day or upon the plain 
Shimmers a green of Maius. Hereunto 

1 hasten, with the sweet smells of the glebe. 
Of furrow and of the springing sward o'er all 
Wafted and with the tinkle of hundred bells 
From hill-path and from pasture thrilling air. 
For restoration of Italian peace 

Hath brought the shepherd back and him who 

tills. 
And hither I flee, as thousands of the sons 
Of men for countless future generations 
Who seek thee, Muse, or hear thy bell and breath 
31 



POEMS OF PERSONALITY 

Within, shall flee the fashion and the fume 

(Thanks, also, unto thee, Theocritus!) 

Of Jove's Octavian panoply, pursuing 

The Jove of oak-land and the oak-loved nymph 

With inspiration of thine utterance. 

For I am rustic-born and yeoman-bred: 

Vergilius, I, herald of field-born things. 

The rustic truths I sing of hind and home 
More glorious in the splendor of sun and moon 
Or stars than is the glistening pageantry 
Of torch on torch in painted portico 
And gleam of eagles in an armied Rome 
When some triumvir triumphs in his hour. 
T is not alone the armies of the sky 
In rank on rank of onrush (though indeed 
Must man Lucretianwise with flood and storm 
Contend, I ween) nor only through the valleys 
The noisier winds our trumpets far outblowing 
Which move me, nor the keen blazonry of beams 
Golden and silver of an Hesperus 
Or wild Aurora; but the fervent sense 
(Through all the generous strife and noblest toil) 
Of friending gods, of spirits of strength and health 
32 



VERGIL 

Everywhere round about where men and earth 
Conspire together to bring forth a fruit. 

Muse, 't was surely to the love of Maius 
And fervent friendship for the country gods. 
Scarce for a kingHer city, that they came 
/Eneas and his comrades voyaging; 

If fatefully for Rome's establishment 

By hero-fighting on the chosen soil. 

Yet longing unto loveliest Italy, 

Her streams and succoring favor of her shores. 

For was it not from ruin of citied splendor 

And conflict of the Trojan citadel 

Betray'd, that they far over the guiding ocean 

Fled and companion'd of the open heaven 

If weary yet with dignity endured 

In their swift ships and finally to Tibris 

Came and the Latian yeoman-home discern'd? 

1 f by the fiat of the gods or fate 

Were cities founded and the kingly Rome 
Begun, ah, only with a cultured glebe 
Surrounded and the high labors of the seeding, 

he ripening and the harvest, to their hand. 
For without sickle and ploughshare may not men 
33 



POEMS OF PERSONALITY 

Abide on earth ; nor aught imperial 
Arise save swathed in sweet conspiracy 
With Ceres and Tellurian increase-gods. — 
O Muse, from Rome's magnificence I haste me. 
Hailing the splendors of imperial years. 
The templed glories of Octavian power 
Here hidden, but to the eyes of one inspired 
Proclaim'd, beneath the heaven's best height and 

breadth. 
In earth's fecundity of oak and olive. 
Of barley and the blithe flock-pasturing; 
The vine; and all that sprouteth under the toil 
Of country-stalwart folk, the yeoman-breed • 
Saturnian, from the Mother! O Muse, I tell 
Of empire's best foundation, as I yield me. 
Fervent for sweet release from urban turmoil, 
To scent and shimmer of this primeval spring! 



34 



JOHN THE BAPTIST 

Lo! (for the spirit whispers) cometh one 

Out from these many folk who throng the shore, 

Even to be baptized of me but now; 

Cometh a savior whose whole insight is 

Of righteousness and glory through mankind. 

Yet, though my ministry may mean but him. 

Ay, though the baptism urgeth righteousness 

By sign of the cleansed spirit; how might I 

Absolve him who hath nothing felt of sin; 

I, shamed and sinful, cleanse whose heart is pure? 

For I am full of sin and shame, the shame 
Even of these sinners whom I bid repent. 
For I am wild and of the wilderness 
A dweller, lest the sinfulness of men 
Have wholly hold of me; yet shame hath hold 
Of every part of me and is my soul: 
Because I may not see a righteousness 
About me, nor a glory through mankind. 
Sooth, I have said: 'The kingdom of our God 
Is near at hand. Prepare your deeds before 
Just recompense impending!' And have so 
35 



POEMS OF PERSONALITY 

Fail'd to attain self-conquest; am as one 

Aware of evil. And this sin and shame 

Of all men, even them I bid repent, 

Is mine; and nought of knowledge of the good 

Nor any justice and fulfilment now. 

Now is there one who cometh wholly pure. 
He steps from out the throng, he in his turn. 
And in his coming is mine only hope. 
For in the blessed contact, in the touch 
And sight and sound of him, I hope to see 
Some righteousness, a glory through mankind, 
A justice and full recompense on earth 
Now and forever in the thought and deed 
So wholly freed from evil, in his soul 
So pure and unashamed and utterly 
Unlike these sinners whom I bid repent. 
Unlike their sin and shame that is mine own. 
Even by the sight of him mine heavens shall 
Be open'd and the dove of God, descending, 
Humanize Wilderness, ay, civilize 
The wild and savage soul of me who spurn 
All known of me, and so must spurn myself 
To degradation. 

36 



JOHN THE BAPTIST 

Lo! he comes and speaks — 
His will be words acclaiming power in me 
And righteousness and purity? For how 
Might one thus pure imagine such a thing 
As this my soul of sorrows? Ah, how come 
To be baptized of one deem'd sinful? — Nay, 
He speaks: 

"Yea, John; for I, who wholly find 
Mankind a glory, yet have need to be 
Baptized even of thee to take men's sins 
Upon me and be utterly their shame." 



37 



PHILO 

The question of the embassy to Caesar; 
Might I assure me to take up the task? — 

Not in the desert haply nor the caves 
Of rock-bound wilderness may Israel now 
Serve God in strength and holiness but, 'mid 
The haunts of divers men of many creeds. 
Walking the ways as of idolaters; 
Though inly praising God with psalm and prayer 
For insight of a revelation pour'd 
Interpretative of philosophy 
By pictured presentation of a truth 
Which, or in Kroton or Athenai taught 
For rumor of a written Pentateuch, 
Yet, by their wisest of philosophers 
Hellenic-lofty, were but dimly guess'd: 
Who miss the privilege of Moses' tribes. 
The spirit-mightiness of Moses' God. 
Oh, surely I dream not that in literal proof 
Of triumph politic the Jews at last 
Alone shall wield from an imperial throne 
A power like to Cassar's and be chosen 
38 



PHILO 

Successor to the dominance of Rome! 
Oh, rather should power of Scripture, working through 
An earnest exposition logically 
As, ages since, even Pythagoras 
Or Platon or these Stoics latterly 
Have still expounded in half-ignorance 
Scripture and only Scripture to the Greeks 
(With nobleness of thought and loftiest aim!) — 
Rather, I say, should exegesis, patient. 
Transfuse the pagan thought, whilst pagan thought 
Illumine mutually to modern ends 
Of ethic practice in the Roman State 
The picture-proof of Moses — if but he 
The perfect soothsayer, Moses everywhile. 
Be taken (howsoever inwardly 
By parable) for type of perfect truth. 
Yea, though the truth of Scripture changeth not. 
Men's ways whereunto Scripture speaketh truth. 
Men's ways wherein Reason hath practice-truth, 
Are otherwise than in Mosaic hours. 
And Moses, were he here amongst us still 
In Egypt, might not at command of God 
Lead from this Alexandria Israel forth 
To seek God in the wastes of Sinai now: 

39 



POEMS OF PERSONALITY 

When every corner of the whole wide world 
Were sway'd by Caesar; and the Stoic cult 
With truths of Platon or Pythagoras 
Hath half-unwittingly inform'd men's minds 
With Moses; and our ways are interfused 
Hellene with Hebrew to the gain of both — 
To gain of both in spirit, though the flesh 
Suffer Rome's persecutions politic! 
Ay, though in ancient days Jehovah dwelt 
(And Rome, alas! would ape Jehovah now!) 
Doubtless in Sinai, gave commandment there 
And guided with the pillar of smoke by day. 
Of flame by night. His people through the lands 
Of dearth and stones where never waters are 
Unless by miracle, and miraculous 
Doubtless did Moses lead the people forth 
From under Pharaoh (hath not Moses said it?). 
To-day, this hour, such Moses might not rise 
To lead from under Roman Pharaoh forth 
Whose power hath hold of all the ends of earth 
Extensive as with God's and absolute. 
(But, ah! may our folk be spared from rendering him 
The rights of reverence due to God alone; 
Which now he claims and would by force exact, 

4Q 



PHILO 

And, whether or no the embassy I take, 
We fain would someway hinder as we may!). 
And therefore is the need to read anew 
The Exodos in guise of parable, 
The wandering in the wilderness, for words 
Of allegory to this future time; 
And understand the peace of promised lands 
(Which peace indeed did yield unceasing war!) 
Not for a temporal dominion, save 
Some Mind-Messiah, yea, for Paraclete, 
Logos of all the angel-daimon host. 
An Hebrew-Hellenist of cultured tongue. 
In God's good time arise to heal the wounds 
Of Judah's spirit decried and wisdom spurn'd 
Of Moses from beneath the brazen heel 
Of Roman bigot ! And until that day 
Of logic-wrought deliverance (which each man 
May hasten haply too with prayer or praise) 
Must he who would to Judah be a guide 
Interpret Scripture as a painted wall 
Of old word-picture, mystic, secret glyph 
Scarce-understanded yet a paradigm 
Of modern application, helpful aye 
For guidance from the bondage of our tribe 
41 



POEMS OF PERSONALITY 

In latter days: the last, I trust, of earth 
Before the coming of the spirit's King. 
But so, no refuge may be from the wrath, 
The curses and the blows of conquerors 
Who hold the Holy City with the grasp 
Of plunder and oppression, who oppress 
Judah in every city of the East 
Or West alike with cruelty of stripes. 
Betraying Israel's trust where God hath said: 
'The lands of milk and honey shall be yours' - 
Though Rome be now of Hellenism the home 
As Hellenism be of mundane power; 
And Israel waits but mind's millennium 
Of coalescence with Hellenic reason 
To earn the spirit-lordship of the world ! — 
We wait ! There is no refuge upon earth ! 

Ai, ai; there is no refuge as of yore! 
But now, while yet we wait the culture-hope 
Of coalescence with an Hellenism, 
Must something in relief of temporal shame 
Be largely undertaken, or we perish. 
For now, as said, no lands of vineyardage 
Remain unto our people, save the lash 
42 



PHILO 

Of Caesar's tax-extortion spoil the fruit 
Of harvest and the legions take away 
All profit and all honor from the homes 
Of husbandry and of our Law's delight. 
Despoiling synagogues, ay, ravishing 
Chest-treasure from Jehovah and defiling 
The temple of the body of our maids 
(Which should be clean, for altars of the soul) 
With lewdness and the bastardy of babes 
Which bear the enmixture of a gentile blood. 
That measures must be taken to prevail 
Against the oppression of the Roman flesh 
If Hellenism of Hebraic soul 
(So otherwise than bastardy of blood!). 
The mind's millennium, Logos upon earth. 
Be ever as expected ; measures wrought 
In terms of temporal resistance, strength 
Of obstinacy, waiting, working for it 
Even as the Roman works who doth prevail — 
Though not by leading-out, where refuge is not ! 
A modern-Moses, were he with us now. 
What might he do for Israel, how proceed 
(Smiting the rock of world's unrighteousness) 
To turn our tribulations and escape 
43 



POEMS OF PERSONALITY 

The Roman wantonnesses? There hath been 
In Palestine about Jerusalem 
And reaching unto Alexandria 
Some rumor of one all-uncultured braggart. 
With high but impious claim like Caesar's own 
And history aping Moses', Jesus named. 
In circumstance ironical condemn'd 
And suffering crucifixion recently — 
Much to the satisfaction, as 1 deem, 
Both of the Roman governor and wisely 
Of Caiaphas as well; for anarchy 
Well might ensue were ignorance to rule. 
Nay, he could be (a carpenter) no Son 
Of great Jehovah Whom his claim blasphemed, 
No Logos-intervention in the world ! 
And (oh, 1 'd fain 't were otherwise, alas !) 
No Paraclete, Hellenic culture-type 
Of truths Hebraic, shall be in my time. 
Him I shall see not who am growing old. — 
Yet, yet! a true second-Moses in mine age, 
This year, to-day, this hour indeed might strive 
Through influence of the holy picturing 
Newly illuminate with insight fresh 
Of wise interpretation (which my heart 
44 



PHILO 

Hath ever loved and reverenced !) to release 
Our folk from bondage, turning thus again 
Judah's captivity! Though, if this be I, 
This Moses — and where else may he be found 
Than here in Egypt? — how should I proceed 
(The call from Horeb being for me intended) 
Where desert wastes afford no more a rescue. 
And Pharaoh for a God upon the earth 
(Spare, Lord, Thy people from the worship of him !) 
Bindeth his yoke on every place thereof? 
Yet, grasp the riper wisdom, in default 
Of desert fastness for escape from Rome — 
More wisely than the cenobite Essenes 
(Who, stung no less by every flesh-temptation. 
Flee but the conflict of the race to-come; 
Without, by righteous works, achieving conquest 
Of any Canaan beyond wilderness) 
Who take the letter, but ignore the truth 
Of fresh conditions — learn and grasp, my soul. 
The reason-teaching, Jewry how to rescue 
Scarce by escape but by a courage nobler 
Of Daniel in the den; taking upon me 
This mission unto Caesar to demand 
First our religion, to his claim adverse 

45 



POEMS OF PERSONALITY 

Of honors superhumanly divine; 
First his protection promised for the cult 
Of great Jehovah; and, that granted us. 
His further admonition to the mob 
And to this cruel Bassus, to allow us 
(As pledged unto our fathers) here in peace 
To dwell in trade assiduously — awaiting 
Still a Messiah to the trump of doom 
If so our people please (the King, I mean. 
Of Spirit-Culture ruling Reason's world!). 
But meanwhile hoarding unto politic ends 
The riches of achievement, merchant-power 
(The waters of the rock-face gushing out !) 
To serve well as the chosen Logos-folk 
Unto evangel of philosophy 
The purposes of kingdom when He come. 
For all may not be left for God to do 
As when His manna fed the wilderness. 
But He will help who first have help'd themselves 
To turn oppression to a secret gain 
And, in earth's sudden clarification, rise 
Soldiers and heralds of the Paraclete, 
Possessors of the earth, knowing to use 
The bounty of the world stored-up unseen 
46 



PHILO 

(As practice-wisdom in the Scriptures liideth) 

Till opportunity with hand-of-God 

Display'd in Him Who shall make new all minds. 

Discover in the people of His choice 

(This leaven of the universal bread 

That feedeth Roman, Hellenist alike) 

Already them who hold in fee the nations. 

Exacting tribute whereof Caesar's seems 

But idle dross. For enterprise alone. 

Not tyranny (more than labor isolate 

Essenelike), shall what trade's own toil creates 

Acquire and hold till God pronounce us Kings — 

Not of a petty, temporal empire, nay. 

But to eternity, time's archetype 

In Platon's creed descried, whose thousand years 

Of waiting, be they tens of thousands still. 

Serve and shall serve best to a patient folk 

For aye-unending opportunity 

And, at the last, fullness of spirit-truth! 

Leave to the cenobite the literal word 
Of Moses and of Aaron, Pharaoh 'spoil'd 
By flight unto the desert fastnesses ! 
Learn from the lips of men and angels both 
47 



POEMS OF PERSONALITY 

The novel exegesis; upon earth 

(Of that same Jesus spoken, with wisdom haply) 

Peace among men until millennium. 

Not for secluded sanctity, support 

In mere provision by a manual toil 

Of unforeseeing mouth-necessity, 

But, labor for fruit of trade, for world-resource. 

Possession of a wealth among mankind 

Exceeding wealth of very Solomon 

Or Caesar — and the Moses be myself 

To plead a peace, a privilege for toil 

And trade, unto the sons of Israel 

Unarm'd, unharming; ah, but secretly 

Achieving conquest that our Judah's folk. 

Their spirit-strength in worldly prudence based. 

Be worth the coming of the Paraclete 

(The Logos-upon-earth and mutual wisdom 

Of Moses, Platon or Pythagoras) ; 

They, used to earth-possession ere He come; 

Ay, worth God's Choice! — For friends have urged 

me on 
To voyage unto Caesar in the cause 
Of peace, to plead that persecutions cease 
In Alexandria and hate have end. 

48 



PHILO 

And I have half-demurr'd, not in the fear 

Of Caesar's wrath (though well might he destroy 

Such embassy) but, heeding Aaron's way 

And Moses' of escape into the wastes 

As these Essenes and lonelier anchorites 

Mistake the method for a literal 

Acceptance of example! But I see 

(Allowing now the soul to follow-out 

In contemplation every influence 

Making for inward mastery), I see 

And feel the workings of the symbol-truth. 

The mystic meaning to the times applied, 

Like picture-glyphs upon old Pharaoh's stones 

Still sacred though their literal intent 

(The leading-forth by Moses, as 1 mean. 

To any refuge: which I now forswear!) 

Of Pharaoh's headship, whence could be escape 

Unto a Canaan, be no more believed 

Because of Caesar. — I will voyage to him, 

A second Moses, there to plead of peace ! 



49 



MARCUS AURELIUS 

Forasmuch as the gods have gifted me ^ 
With firmness, with a fortitude to bear 
The burden of this world imperial; 
And by perfervid sentience of mine heart 
Above the stupor of the cooler clod 
To imitate, within, the soul without 
Of the universe at fiery potency; 
Forasmuch as I feel within myself 
(Perceiving, as with sense which seems not sense 
Of stuff material, my frame beyond !) 
This integration of the logos-seed 
Resistive to attack from aught of earth 
And self-containedly the all-contain'd 
Sustaining in the daily storm and stress 
Of strains antagonistic, reconciled 
In power effective of the spirit of me 
Controlling destinies unto mine own 
Of men and nations in the Roman name: 
How should the heart of me, made staunch and true 
By favor of the gods, in least complain 
Of duty and imperial destiny? 
How seek for soul's performance any path 

50 



MARCUS AURELIUS 

Sweeter than this of privilege to be 

Upholder to the universal Rome, 

Central support; by high hyperbole, 

Well-nigh as though some world-soul of the State: 

As in our doctrine of the Stoa taught 

Best ultimate recompense of any man — 

Who, death beyond, incorporates with All; 

And dwells, imperial of the universe. 

At last Augustan at the flame of God? 

Forasmuch as the gods have made me strong. 
Why murmur as for weakness, why admit 
Weight of the world for burden, be distraught 
At heart with presage of a Rome foregone 
And universe disrupted? Am not I 
Able to labor yet nor be dismay'd? 
And, while the power and honor of the State 
Rest in me, shall this soul of me betray 
The trust, the confidence wherewith the gods 
Appointed me to kingship? Let him seek 
Relief, in whom responsibility 
Meets and awakes no native kingliness 
Of prudence and of wisdom. In my heart 
Have the immortals planted self-control 
51 



POEMS OF PERSONALITY 

Wherethrough alone may man control the world. 
Unto my vast responsibility 
(Keeping me thus with nature in accord) 
My nature makes response. Though 1 be worn 
With bodily discomfort (though the waves 
Beat round !) ; though Rome be wasted with the years 
As I ; and these the Marcomanni knock 
With deathly warning at the open door 
Of self-destruction to our madden'd State; 
Yet shall my soul be firm (stilling the waves 
Reverberative wide!) which feels within 
The strength to save and be (hyperbole 
Of rhetor whilst it seem!) soul-like for all — 
Though elsewise be the days but vanity, 
But sickness and corruption unto earth; 
But gods gone stale who scarce may be fulfill'd 
Save inasmuch as setting man's soul to it. 
Gifting him with the courage to sustain! 
For thus the Stoic wisdom, grasp of truth 
Firm and supporting in the wreck of things 
And Rome's bewilderment, her forfeiture 
Of ancient piety and god-respect. 
For with the forfeiture of fair respect 
Toward gods (the temple-stone's entablature 

52 



MARCUS AURELIUS 

Of empire) and with folly of the sects 
Of Christ (seditious even as impious. 
Fanatic, truculent and turbulent!). 
Of Isis or Mithraic mysteries 
Corrupting Rome, hath solidarity 
Of Rome's imperial purport pass'd away 
And in the passing sapp'd the Empire's arm 
Of nerve and sinew: that our legions lie 
Battling along the Empire's bounds alarm'd, 
In panic-desperation though we crush 
These naked Marcomannic breasts anew 
An hundred times with bitterness of war 
Still never ended; whilst the Roman State 
Melts man by man into a common grave 
With these barbarians; or Danuvius takes 
Civic and pagan blood, mere blood alike, 
Down to the distant, dismal Euxine sink 
And there in sacrifice of Parthian hordes 
Lustrates at last, purifies salinely 
The world from Rome's dominion — that a world. 
Innocent of our tyranny and stench, 
Arise that shall forget us! 1, the last 
Of Romans (for who else to-day takes heed 
To Tibris?) realize the tragedy 
53 



POEMS OF PERSONALITY 

In mine own flesh, anticipate the world; 
And feel in me our tyranny forgot 
And mine imperial load not vainly laid 
Down at the basis of a nobler State 
Haply, at worst even in the womb of things 
Where godliness in conflagration makes 
Of chaos sure foundation. But the gods 
Meanwhile have given me strength to play my part: 
Feeling for mine the wholeness of the world, 
As runs the doctrine. Unto each new task 
Be the wise heart address'd unto the end; 
Forasmuch as the gods have set man to it. 

Ay, no man may be (though the Cynics taught — 
Too inaccordant with, or world-without 
Or, world-within the senses of a soul — 
And some among the Stoics have believed !) 
Sufficient to himself, heart-unaware 
Of burden and responsibility 
By tasks beyond the momentary man. 
Though the soul fain were free and sweet to feel 
An inward emptiness in riddance of 
All outward obligation, yet the Soul 
Of All within the soul hath hold on him 
54 



MARCUS AURELIUS 

And aye impels unto the task of all 
And universal burden, making light 
Indeed the infinite imposition, teaching 
The way of heart's efi'ectuality 
Even in the linkage soul with soul throughout 
The intimate extension. Nought were known 
Of any world, were the soul-sense, as said, 
Circumscribed in the conscience of the man 
To the mere frame of man as he appears 
Large though on throne of Caesar loftily 
Yet empty in an isolation felt 
Of passionless self-containment! Yea, were mind 
A tablet razed, then might the vacancy 
Suffer no plenishment; and blank remain 
The world of any meaning in my soul, 
Though ne'er so Antonine, unto this day! 
Yet have things meaning and a passion born 
Of strength, not emptiness. And mind were even 
Some fecundation of an universe, 
A logos-seed still individual, 
A God-containment (in the personal self 
By sense-containment) of the world without — 
In being with me created unto earth 
Whilst in me and alone because within 
55 



POEMS OF PERSONALITY 

Cosmic, pneumatic, fundamental, whole: 
The self-control which yields control of all, 
The world-control which is man's hold of truth! 
The man is ultimate; for God within 
(And only Godhood proven of the self!) 
Compels the God-assumption. And I strive 
And strike and am effectual through the world; 
Not evidencing soulhood cosmical 
Of the world as over-god, but of myself 
In terms of God demonstrable within me — 
The worldhood of a soul : as after death 
Dream'd for deliverance, so now in life 
Myself imperial of the universe. 
From first Augustan at the flame of God, 
Waiting not unto death (which well may prove 
A self-extinction of the person-God 
As of the person?) to create through God, 
As God through me, this warring world of Rome: 
Incorporate of all, life-recompensed, 
Myself by soul the fiery potency! 
'T were thus the undying godship of man's heart 
(True temple-stone of all-world empire!) 
Alone sustains this Marcomannic war. 
Alone remains unbroken with the frame 
56 



MARCUS AURELIUS 

Of self or city; godship, by this sense 

Of felt and passionate identity 

(Not in the smoulder'd ashes of a corpse 

But in perfervid sentience rational !) 

Through and beyond this Roman polity. 

This only can enable me to bear 

With fortitude and equanimity 

The woes of the world: a wisdom of the world 

(Scarce of the stale, insufferable gods 

A gift to endure their task nor faint for it; 

Nor of the sheer sensation isolate, 

And so insensible!) which is the God. 

And God is of me as I labor wisely. — 

Where God is of each wise man laboring 

And every wise man laboring is God, 

Must world have solidarity though Rome, 

Ebbing with blood upon Danuvius slink 

To wan oblivion. Though the world be rid 

Of all the gods held sacred, yet shall God 

(Men's worldhood each as soul-alive divine!) 

Give strength; and in Him be the gods fulfiU'd. 



57 



PLOTINUS 

There is a mighty storm upon the sea 

Impostumated after starless nights. 

And I in peril with the driven ship 

Through wrath of elements; though they and I 

(My soul, my mind but godlike more than they) 

Alike be emanation-borne and fill'd 

With peace undying of eternity 

The fearless as the moveless! And, for now 

The danger and the dizziness o'erwhelm 

Of physic-element and sensuous things. 

Shall I enshrine my soul within herself 

Contemplative above the fears impress'd. 

By stimulation taken of the fear 

To search in sense for truth, to seek a sign 

For meanings intimate and ultimate 

In outward things that work upon me now. 

These elements which so assert their power: 

To conquer outward things whilst learning in them 

(An haply logos in them may be found) 

A symbol of the all-ineffable! — 

The emanation of the ineffable 
58 



PLOTINUS 

Is little like this sea-wind's perilous force 
That shifting blows, whether from east, west, south 
I wot not — blows now here, now there, and yields 
No certainty directive though through leagues 
Hurrying amain and hurling potency 
To world's remotest bounds. But like the gale 
In part, although inverse of operance 
And urging by attraction spiritual 
Not physic-thrust the minions of its mood. 
Is godliest emanation which impels 
With intimate insistence every soul 
(As every wave is driven of the wind) 
Unto her source with onward tendency 
Which needs were Godward whatsoe'er the way; 
Whilst thereby unto seeming vacuum, 
The All-thing that is nothing outwardwise. 
Itself return'd and indrawn, on itself 
Revolving self-contain'd if overt still — 
As these dark clouds like sand-whirl African 
(1 fear their gathering fury sinister!) 
Aswirl over the mast-head seem to show 
My storm-bewilder'd senses, though the air 
Itself be black-invisible! Yet, unlike 
Aught atmospheric in directive truth 
59 



POEMS OF PERSONALITY 

(From God and Godward whatsoe'er the way). 
The emanations are a constancy, 
However of diverseness infinite; 
A guide to steer by an we need to steer: 
As, Gordianus slain and I escaped 
In peace, the pilot seeks from Antioch — 
I dare not ask him if the course be lost ! — 
Romeward to steer the vessel. Thus the hint 
Of circumstance, this storm-experience 
Of turmoil, variance in the things that move 
(In aimless blustering of the baffling squall 
So frame-disheartening and so sickening with 
The giddiness and wallow of the wave; 
And yet withal so inly clarifying 
And stimulant because so beautiful 
In storm's symmetric power balancing 
By force all counter-purpose!) serves the soul 
With thought, with recognition of herself 
In outward things, searching the paradox 
For symbol, for the like and the unlike 
To spirit in this the cosmos. If at Rome 
(First Ostia reach'd by fortune unforeseen) 
I needs must pedagogically prove 
The truths of Godhood the ineffable, 
60 



PLOTINUS 

Should sign and symbol for the paradox 

Be found; or words be wanting, nothing taught. 

And, in the weakness of the body sick 

And helpless to assist with any plan 

The steersman, half in fear if half-released 

The soul lies free to beauty, to perceive 

By likeness and unlikeness unto God 

Significance within the element 

Its all-controlling grandeur and devise. 

Built of the beauty, spiritual truths 

(Like universal air) at one with God 

Though given in symbol which she half-rejects 

Whilst half-accepting. For the truth of God 

(Truth not the world as sense perceiveth it) 

Were vortex-void in sooth, nothing of God 

Nor verity, unless the soul (herself 

Of nature mix'd, matter and reason both) 

Conceive the spirit-paradox — in calm 

Of very storm and sickness — and so find 

Symbols which even in unlikeness prove 

Half-like and somewise are of God the truth 

Because of reason though material 

And recognised by soul as of herself. 



6i 



POEMS OF PERSONALITY 

For, though God be but one (and not an one 
Of unit-quantity that enters thus 
In multiplicity) yet multiple 
(Both one and many as God is not one) 
Is God's self-emanation. And the world, 
Though not God, yet in beauty thus perceived 
Of power and eke of terror taking it 
Allows for life in God and ecstasy ! 
And air affords, if scarce by fitfulness 
In fury yet, by cosmic continence 
Of all-impulsive power self-contain'd 
(Although in thrust dynamic, not in love!) 
Some image haply of the ineffable. 
But yet the uncertain wind I would reject 
At heart, that showeth not an own desire 
(With wrath to thwart the pilot and make faint 
The body by a weltering; though therethrough 
Perchance, and to the gale unwittingly. 
Be soul by relaxation stimulate !) — 
The wind that, like the barbarous and bad 
Of mankind, showeth not an own desire 
For God but seeketh blindly, gropingly, 
Cloudily dark the way of immanence. 
(The storm were at its bursting, as I judge, 
62 



PLOTINUS 

Whilst the ship staggers and the steersman shouts 
Hoarsely his hard commands within the gloom !) 
And how might ocean, vague and agitant, 
Yield intellect a figure? Doth the truth, 
However self-composed of world's dismay. 
In high self-contemplation irritate 
(Like this same sea which beats at her own breast) 
Its all-sufficiency with failure-stress; 
That agony should typify for thought 
The ultimate poise and uniformity? 
If now in misery I yet achieve 
A contemplation and an inwardness. 
Would men, save haply an Origenes 
Hebraic, chaotic and chimerical — 
Would men so take an anguish for a sign 
When, save the Stoa with its cold content. 
Our order'd Hellenism (self-severe, 
Ascetic outwardly) yet makes for joy 
And plaineth only when the very plaint 
Implies a tumult-beauty press'd upon it? 
And as for earth (though, might a long-sought shore 
Loom safe, unshaken, how desirable!) 
Should any principle so dead as earth 
Which of itself would seem to speech inert, 

63 



POEMS OF PERSONALITY 

Be liken'd to the inmost core of life? 
'T is true that earth were than the air or sea 
More stable, safe for man and comforting 
And hence akin to truth's eternity. 
But of itself were earth not purposeful, 
Impellant nor directive potently. 
'T is true, too, that in earth, as all men know, 
(Ai! also in these terror-thundering skies!) 
Leaps fire unquenchable. And, should we gain 
By fortune of the tempest or by skill 
Right for the Scyllan straits and storm be o'er. 
Should 1 behold as never hitherto 
(Or, by Neapolis, the tomb of towns 
Vesuvius might serve and Plinius' tale, 
Vesuvius more angry latterly?) 
The fount of hidden fire that Sicily 
Hath erst despoil'd. And fire might well afford 
Symbol of self-compulsion absolute 
More marvellous than storm-wind thus and yield 
The truth a teaching and a paradigm? 
And beauty, ay, be felt in fear thereof 
As in this fear of tempest on me now? 
But fire as fire were too tempestuous 
For teaching of transmutance crystalline 
64 



PLOTINUS 

Its peace beyond adventuring; ah me, 
Too terrible, unless the fear entrance! 
And I, though fearful and in fear possess'd 
Of beauty-cognisance, would not to men. 
Who well might miss the beauty, teach a fear! 
So, shall a fire which man must mainly fear 
(Despite a latent beauty half-perceived 
For imitation of a wrath-of-soul !) 
Bursting, enraged and life-destructive (ai! 
A bolt that stings and hisses nearward!) grant 
The logos to our logic and be body. 
Filling the pedagogic need of sign. 
To spiritual speech and ecstasy? 
Though /^tna seen above the swirling seas 
Might seem a rescue out of all distress 
(The pilot haply may outride the storm 
And reach an haven near Messana's port). 
Yet fire, although the mightiest element 
And doubtless purest, shall not stand for God. 

What, then, may stand at all? I deem no stuff 
Nor strength of an universe at voyaging, 
However haply like-unlike to God 
Or truly of God-substance innermostly, 
65 



POEMS OF PERSONALITY 

Efficient to embody unto speech 
The truths of emanation utterly. 
And thus my thought, although but now inclined. 
Because of beauty, kindlier unto them. 
Mine inmost mind must solemnly reject 
For symbol each and every element 
(There are but four, despite new-fangled schemes!). 
Air, water, earth or fire, thus all alike — 
Acceptable though unto antiquity 
In texts of physiographers extant 
Who spied no paradox but took the world 
Without significance intelligible 
For cosmos self-sustain'd nor sought in soul ! 
The physiographers would sing but myth 
(Anaximandros yet knew boundlessness!) 
Not serious faith: their terms unfit to sponsor 
(Nor is mere breath the spirit, as some would hold) 
For symbol-figure unto spirit-speech. — 
Wherein, at least, that nothing of the world 
As taken in experience of sense 
Sufficeth to exhibit Unity 
Am I at heart with old Pythagoras, 
To whom indeed past and to-come might well 
Be signified of system presently 
66 



PLOTINUS 

(Ay, wiselier than by mere Parmenides !) 
In Number, emanation verily 
Out of the womb of Unity, an One 
Ever-repeating in each increment, 
Whilst in such integration overtwise 
Afforded quality, a character 
Definable as unity despite 
Its serial difference from unity 
And so by unity substantial still! 
But, for Pythagoras, although in sooth 
He voyaged, toss'd upon the tumbling seas. 
And should have known their spirit-loneliness 
And need of organon to reconcile 
With distant bliss the hourly dole and woe. 
Seems nought wherein the integrating truth. 
Save if by demonstration cold, remote 
And unappealing to the love of Love, 
Were power and presence to the faith of man. 
For Platon, there be many unities. 
As many as there be within the world 
Life-kinds or aspects, that the voyager 
Might at all seasons mentally partake 
In integration of intelligence 
Perchance, but never in the absolute sign 
67 



POEMS OF PERSONALITY 

Achieve, enjoy the ultimate immanence. 
And, though to Aristoteles a truth 
Static, beyond the immediate atmosphere 
(Nor will it aid, with Anaxagoras, 
To make of mind almost an element !) 
Stood postulate and illustrate in each 
And every yearning toward the God of law. 
What way of emanation offer'd he. 
Of mutual intropermeance of zeal 
(Unless by fair example in himself!). 
By any kinship of the God with world 
Inherent unto either mutually 
Or symbol of enshrining sustenance? 
Though someway is the symbol requisite. 
The soul an universal voyager 
Akin to natural facts as unto mind 
And in them known, not as an alien thing 
To alien things created as by act 
Foreign in source to that it mediateth. 
But of herself unto herself sofar 
As finding beauty by their symmetries. 
Their balancing of forces or of fears; 
Akin to natural facts and needing them 
Although save reason-serving they were nought; 
68 



PLOTINUS 

Herself (the soul, as other than the mind 
And thereby making-up the natural man) 
Nought save demonstrable in natural things: 
An emptiness, a vortex-vacuum 
In literal troth and not herself a stade 
Of emanation save she reach both ways 
Worldward and mindward. And the Stoics' cult 
Of physic world-soul (which should contradict 
Their mood-indifference), ay, despite therein 
An hint of intellect, I dubiously 
Distinguish from an antique burning-up 
Or burning-down of Herakleitos' scheme: 
A sign mistook for that it signifies; 
And signifies, if by the proved mistake. 
Too darkly for the teaching of the truth ! 
Ah ! though I voyage and am wholly held 
In weakness, sickness of the sea-wide wash 
(And fear of the tempest, found yet beautiful!) 
Shall I not yield unto the easier way 
Whether of myth-worn element with those 
Of earlier days or, with the Stagirite 
And Platon, of a truth beyond our world. 
But with the mind seek still if ecstasy 
(A standing in the very truth of things 
69 



POEMS OF PERSONALITY 

Though living and embodied) be allow'd 
With weakness of this weariness and fear; 
And vision of the final symbol come 
With swooning of the sorry wanderer. 
The speech must be embodied; else were God 
Without world-emanation and the soul 
Mute in the presence of the sensuous show 
Whose beauty mirrors and partakes of her! 
The speech must be embodied. And the mind 
Turns in upon herself in fear of storm 
Acknowledging the beauty, yea, acclaiming 
With high abandonment the fury of it, 
Will-less but sapient as for ecstasy. 
Around me is indeed a turmoil wild. 
Through fainting senses for a last time taken. 
The waves wax high; the laboring vessel heaves 
And settles with the billows' weltering: 
Her pilot wots not whither, save a sun 
(Unseen yet borne within his reasoning soul) 
With confidence directive guide him true 
And yield him certainties to me unkenn'd: 
The sun, oh ! would he j:onquer with his beams 
The blackness and with safety (which the sense 
Still craves in fear of death) ah! grant us light! 
70 



PLOTINUS 

Light ! Can it be that, high the mast above. 
An orb is struggHng, swirHng, straining through 
The hurrying murk? Or doth a phantasy 
In swoon possess me that I seem to sight 
The heart's desire whilst yet my sou! is held 
In elements adverse? Doth ecstasy 
Perchance excite a vision of the good 
Rescue-like from this immanence of death. 
Vision of emanation almost as 
The One ineffable? These seeming beams 
Astream, the rent and scouring clouds, the bright 
Blue of the noon and bare beyond the prow 
A lift of the land, a mountainous upthrust 
To /Etna's overpowering eminence: 
All dream'd though in the agony of death 
By virtue of the visioning! — Ah, Light! 
Ah, Light! in whom alone the elements 
Have logos, bountiful emanation, sure, 
Direct, unswerving yet and penetrant 
(What heed, whether man's optic spirits pierce 
Spaceward and thence rebound upon the eye 
Or if sight be an urgent influence 
In pact corpuscular?) ay, penetrant 
Athwart the universal, self-evolved 
7» 



POEMS OF PERSONALITY 

Unto the confines of the universe. 
Whilst self-directive ever immanent 
In radiance that moves not, searching through 
Far spaces yet remaining at the source. 
Creative as of worlds out of itself 
Without expenditure of force or time, 
With scarce self-diminution: figure fit 
(I care not if, with scant significance. 
Thy name already hath been mouth'd in vain 
In mysteries Mithraic or the tropes 
Of Platon's teaching or Apocalypse) 
For that which must not seem a myth beyond 
The reach of life; which in immediacy 
Of commune mystic is no mystery 
But apprehended of the seeing heart — 
Light! I have found thee in mine ecstasy! 
Though but a swooning dream, above the noon 
Of fear and storm, I trust thee! O'er the soul 
An influence of symbol, to the teaching 
A tongue, the very language of the mind! — 
The sea grows strangely calm ! The sailors shout 
As anchors plunge in the brine! The vessel swings 
As 't were beneath the lee of some tall rock! 
My faintness waxeth firm; mine eyesight cleareth. 
72 



PLOTINUS 

And light, yon subtlest, shimmering effluence 
Which everywhere from sun outpouring flares 
(The optic spirits be but light's rebound, 
A to-and-f ro upon the Godward way !) 
With visible beams about the heavens and o'er 
The face of the glittering sea and on the strand ' 
And cliffs of island coast gleams ardently; 
A revelation of all elements, 
A thing significant! Ah! not an air 
Wandering unwish'd-for, undirective through 
Cloud-regions whither-whither o'er the wave 
And vaguely landward, nor a passionate fire: 
But thrilling earth and saturating sea. 
Entrancing air, a fire without fear 
And beautiful by soul's-own gladness in it 
And poise of joyous equability! — 
No vision, then? No ecstasy? But plain 
Salvation from a watery wrath with just 
Enough of frenzy-fear's intoxication 
To open to the seeking soul a beauty. 
Teaching her of herself within the world. 
Which (Gordianus slain; but kind, Philippus) 
Now may 1 teach unto the heart of Rome ! — 
An hopeful waiting till the new north wind 
73 



POEMS OF PERSONALITY 

Hath spent itself and will allow our course; 
Meanwhile in safety 'neath a crystal sky! 
The baffled gale above the guardian bluff 
Goes wailing. And the pilot smiles serene. 



74 



ORIGEN 

What mean the prosecutions and the cry 
Of many perishing, our testifying 
By blood unto the certainty of truth? 
What mean the prosecutions; when the truth. 
Darkly by pagan picture, brightlier through 
God's revelation, if by parable 
And mystic exegesis either way 
In mouths of men yet, as by allegory, 
Were equally intended at the heart 
(For so my Principles have plainly proved) 
Of every man sincere if ne'er so blind 
(Ah! even by Celsus in his falsities!). 
By Platon, Zenon, Philon or by him 
The porter-pedagogue of whom I drew 
Myself a sense of truth, though disbelieved 
In metaphysic, literal detail 
Be Platonist or Gnostic or whatnot 
Of minor heresies? And if myself. 
Following Clement's or Pantaenus' strength. 
By proof of loftier insight have opposed, 
Through fifty years of teachings liberal 
And generous to the weaklier counterproof, 
75 



POEMS OF PERSONALITY 

The lesser evidence of pagan schools 
And spake by splendor of a God reveal'd 
Logos-wise to the reason and the heart 
In Christ His history and parable 
When mystically reinterpreted 
To anagogic wonder — for such share 
In universal wisdom shared by all. 
For such a part in man's humility 
(Which every Christian hath) and wish to 

serve. 
Should emperors and consuls instigate 
These savage cruelties of city mobs 
Whereby among a many martyrdoms 
Of nobler spirits now return'd to God 
Even my poor frame hath suffer'd, that I 

lie 
In prison-durance sick and fain to death 
By dint of punishments unearn'd of men? 
'T is true that man deserveth punishment 
By spiritual fall, but expiates 
Prenatal sin by putting on the flesh. 
'T is true that death-release returns to God 
The enchasten'd spirit with an holy joy 
If only in his life-time seeking truth : 
76 



ORIGEN 

A search made splendid and salvation sure 
By evidence of unity with God 
Afforded by atonement, Christ for all. 
The Logos in the world of life and death, 
Exhibiting the soul's eternity. 
But I am old and in abundant pain, 
A paradigm of misery; and needs 
Would understand, where understanding fails. 
This supererogation. Man were saved 
By faith and knowledge — why this suffering? 
Ah, though mine inmost doctrine would regard 
The body of Christ but as a pseudonym 
For Logos-operation from the first. 
For mundane-immanent eternity. 
And therefore very Christ a parable 
Of wisdom and the world's divinity 
Scarce quasi-human in historic sense; 
Where now the cosmic mystery, where now 
Unto this suffering body truth more true 
Than Christ the Sufferer (I deign'd to teach 
But unto catechumens!), He whose pain 
Sufficed unto the ages? Wherefore, Christ, 
I question of Thee, even as man to Man, 
For comfort under torture : why Thy sheep 
77 



POEMS OF PERSONALITY 

Be slaughter'd, to what end the wolf allow'd. 
When Thou for all mankind hast suffer'd so? 

I query, Christ ! not solely for myself 
(Nor even for my father, long in peace, 
Leonides who died as I may die) 
But as I am of many sufferers 
An one to whom Thy gift of tongues hath fallen 
In mark'd degree, that I someway may hope 
By speech in inward disputance to find 
A way of understanding and a sense 
Of God's high Providence to future years 
In these His admonitions of dismay. 
For I am bleeding at these smarted sores 
And bruised with blows, that I am fain to die 
Like to Leonides now long in peace 
My father whom I loved; myself too old 
To bear in Caesarea far from home 
My pain (nay, I might linger many months. 
As 1 in exile many years endured. 
Though miserable) who am fain to die 
A testimony to their cruelties: 
I though without a controversial wrath 
(How might we hate at all who learn of Thee 
78 



ORIGEN 

The teaching of Thy suffering in this — 
Yea, were it to kill wrath, that we should die 
A spectacle for pity?) — I feeling all 
Opinions plausibly a veil of truth 
Each in its kind for symbol; and mine own 
Faith and opinion but the noblier posed 
And comprehensive of the pagan truths 
In warrant of Thy witness unto men! 
Unto the purpose of a truth prevail'd 
Against the demons' machinating power 
Thy witness was essential : how now mine 
In feeblest imitation though it be? 
How need the imitation of Thy pain 
Who conquer by an imitant belief? 
I grant that, Christ, upon Thy martyrdom 
(As could not be were Thy humanity 
But Logos-mystery and nowise man — 
For, lo ! the gnosis still must suffer with Thee !) 
Hang all the Law and Prophets. Yet, should men 
Continually corrupt as with a crime 
Repeated, what supreme of holy proof 
Anent men's long-lost unity with God 
Thy martyrdom provided; when alone 
(I speak the outward-doctrine of my pain!) 
79 



POEMS OF PERSONALITY 

Thy pledge of earth-atonement therein given 
And therein erst for aye offer'd the world 
Could sanctify the stigma of the crime; 
And when the sacrifice of merely men. 
Of me or any in the theatres, 
On cross or reeking in the city streets 
Can scarce in least efface the hand's disgrace 
That drives the nail or strikes the lance-head through? 
For we, O Lord, are otherwise than Thou 
Despite best proofs of final unity. 
For we are fallen by prenatal fault 
In earlier lives and are not as Thou art 
Freshly if still eternally from God. 
Ay, we are but the men whom Thou didst save. 
(For, lo! my pain would numb the gnosis quite 
And leave me but the faith of youths untaught, 
Who many years was big with wisdom inward!) 
Though faith be in us and Thy truth reveal'd 
Of Thy part ultimate and absolute 
Sufficing for the cure of every world. 
Yet on our part, save for the fact of faith 
(Remaining now to me, though gnosis fail 
And esoteric dogma for my pain!), 
Save for the simplest fact of some belief 

80 



ORIGEN 

And therefore of some inference of Thee, 
Is truth as diverse, as diversely-held 
As there be men : some more, some less in faith 
Enlighten'd by Thy love-life, yet the wisest 
But meaning Godhead as by symbol spoken, ' 
Not by immediacy: nothing known 
Of ultimacy save the fact of faith 
With sense of tendency toward God therethrough 
As by Thy death provided. And of them 
Who heard not of Thee but desired a truth, 
Their Sokrates correctly puts it plain 
How all is of opinion; though he miss'd 
Well-nigh the saving confidence for whom 
Ail was inquiry with no last reply. 
Whilst some there be (in Alexandria now 
Or Rome 1 wot not, as the years pass on) 
New pagan teachers who, in honest search 
For perfect truth though failing Christian sight. 
Pretend an insight by an ecstasy 
(Like as but God is known unto Himself), 
A standing out of self — we cannot so! 
And yet in them, although the sign and proof 
Be overlook'd and nothing be set forth 
For visioning, there were the saving faith. 
8i 



POEMS OF PERSONALITY 

And thus, that all we feel or suffer in heart 
Or know of others' patience still must be 
Mainly an evidence of saving faith 
But not salvation, not the perfect proof 
Of God-made-manhood, what were then the worth 
Of prosecutions and the testifying 
By blood and death unto the truth of Thee; 
Which, absolute in Thee, must yet in us 
Be little nobler than a pagan creed. 
Only by one degree beyond a truth 
Of Platon or of Zenon or of this 
Plotinos: if but this Plotinos' creed, . 
Learning a content in the fact of Thee, 
Might learn humility! And if Thy love 
Provides a revelation absolute 
In essence, basic to a gnosis-scheme 
Of Logos-generation, as 1 taught 
The elder, sturdier of inquiring minds 
(Following Philon haply), yet the truth 
Were foster'd not, unless I reason false. 
By prosecutions wherein men pretend 
Pagans to absolute authority 
Which in Thine own example stands denied, 
Christians to suiferings that atone the world! 
82 



ORIGEN 

O Christ, in tliis my suffering I pretend 
No mundane ministration — I but die; 
Or live, maybe, in sufferance the more! 

Yet and by faith there is the certainty 
Which needeth not the gnosis, to be mine! 
And we of the revelation (as I wrote 
In Christ against a Celsus' falsity) 
Are rightly fill'd with faith as are not those 
Who base truth but in thought, though subtliest-cull'd 
As Sokrates' from grist of many minds 
Thrice-mix'd and mutual-sifted — woe to faith 
Were Sokrates the Savior; woe to truth 
Were Christ of men forgotten ! And in Christ 
We hold opinion nearer unto God's 
By sense of parable than any man's 
Who seeks direct in ecstasy to take 
A truth devoid of earthly inference. 
And, ha! why might not such sheer certainty. 
Too proud to confess its entity for Thine 
Chiefly and scarce of self (as I in that 
Internal-doctrine of the Logos-scheme 
Had claim'd save for a sane half-consciousness 
Of merit in the pagan argument 

83 



POEMS OF PERSONALITY 

So like to mine and yet so unlike still!). 
Why might not such a sense of certainty 
With hot-head wrath which never could be mine 
(O Christ, I dare a dying, dreadful guess 
Of future things!) within Thy name and God's 
Adopt — with propagation of Thy church 
As the Word groweth and Thy mustard-seed 
(I speak Thy parable for timeless things) 
Supplants the very Empire — undertake 
A persecution of the elder faiths, 
A cruelty upon the creeds of men 
Who lack but light of Thee to love with us; 
And blood-retaliation quite blot out 
For triumph of the grim-eyed demon-crew 
The patience now of dying in Thy name? 
Nay, why might not the growth of Christian power 
(By mine own exile I have ta'en the sting 
Of bishop's scourge for virtue of a truth 
So singly-different from the synod's say!) 
Provoke interpretations of Thy tale 
Seemingly wide asunder as the creeds. 
Then lost from sight and lacking for a foil, 
Of pagan now from Christian; when the cry 
Of blasphemy anent a theme beloved 
84 



ORIGEN 

Augment the indignation; and the wrath 
Of men be roused and prosecutions flare 
Church-wide because, forsooth, Origenes 
Hath difTer'd subtly from Demetrios 
And held, 't would seem, two doctrines plausibly 
And was a presbyter in Cassarea 
If not in Alexandrian schools at home? 
Anent Origines of many creeds 
His faithfulness or falsity to Thee, 
Whether his martyrdom were in Thy name 
Or in the name of Philon: such being held 
Perchance anathema to bishop-folk? 
And blood evoked of heresies blot out 
(My thought hath grasp'd the worst that might ensue 
Because of certainty which saveth souls!) 
The patience of us dying as for Christ? — 
The patience of us dying: that is best! 
A testifying to the truth of Thee 
Who died to save the world; that thus we too 
(If I be now allow'd to die for Thee 
And linger not beyond my ripening 
To rot in Caesarea!) thus we too 
By symbol and by parable of Thee 
Afford a content to the certainty 

85 



POEMS OF PERSONALITY 

In passion of renouncement, without wrath 

Exhibit truth-salvation, minister 

In meekness to the saving as of souls 

(Whose bodily hands drive home the piercing thrust 

Of spear and sword or bruise and break with stone) 

Who by example of the faith in us 

Better than prowess brutal of the mob 

May turn to Thee and seek by these my wounds 

A Godliest of opinions which may yield them 

Substance for seeming ecstasy, a Word 

To teach Thy parable in this of me! 

For I am fain to die, wounded and old 

In Cgesarea, exiled first for truth 

And then maltreated by the mob, a man 

By friend degraded and by foe destroy'd — 

Though none the less assured that in such wrongs 

For men's opinions' sake I yet may feel 

Not chaos of misjudgment but at heart 

Their faith; in them the certainty of truth: 

And yield my life's opinion; testifying. 



86 



JULIAN 

The re-establishment of truths august 
And worship of the Gods Olympian, 
The family imperial of the skies 
As they are children of the Mighty Mother 
Cybele and the all-paternity 
Of Mithra, universal fount of life: 
These are my holy purposes, with power 
Of pure authority, from Jove derived 
And nobly in my blood to me descended 
(By lineage, by adoption under law 
Or by imperial legions' legal choice 
Alike) from him Augustus the divine — 
That primal, perfect instance on the earth 
Of God-Olympian come to dwell with men! 
What folly to adopt unto the State 
A rabble-hero, Christos of the mob 
For tutelary; who at best might be 
The offspring of a tribal god, Jew-bom 
Though traitor unto Jewry, as I deem! 
What folly to adopt for tutelary 
A probable impostor, an apostate 
(Never was I with willingness baptized !) 
87 



POEMS OF PERSONALITY 

And leader of sedition : nowise worth 

To grace a Roman triumph of the East 

(I look for triumph, after Persian wars!); 

Not fit to grace a triumph, but deserving 

The felon's death he died, disgraced, obscure! 

Alas! how could the imperial State be safe 

If built on weakness and obscurity 

When every Emperor himself must stand 

Illustrious, strong and in a father's place 

And power for the governance of men? 

What weakness, if what tyranny perchance. 

Hath been of the bearing of a Constantine 

(Worse, worse of mad Constantius murdering. 

Whose faith profess'd of peace the more condemns 

him!) — 
Bearing of Constantine, the hypocrite, 
Who sought by meek adoption of the mob's 
Rebellion in an anarchy to soothe 
The time's distemper, yet drawing tight the rein 
And spurring sharp as opportunity 
Encouraged outrage! (Doth the Christian creed 
Make moral rulers?) Though I well believe 
He little reverenced the presbyters. 
The bishops with their quarrellings accursed 



JULIAN 

And fatuous, council-seal'd anathemas 
Because of curious heresies forsooth 
Of anomousian, homoiousian cants 
Confusing the claim'd god-sprung beggary 
By every borrow'd Gnostic quirk of talk! 
How could earth's Imperator truckle so 
To such-like schisms, ranting sophistries. 
Themselves without approof respectable 
Of any poet or philosopher 
Anywhere taught in church or portico 
Their deity Hebraic to attest? — 
Nay, at the best and granting Christos half-god. 
What culture earn'd he of the schools; what art. 
Philosophy or nobler poetry 
Bequeath'd for reminiscence? Just a story, 
A folk-tale parabolic, simply said 
And artless, negligible, save it bear 
An hidden burden analogical 
Someway seditious, someway blasphemous. 
Whereof all Christian augurs (be there such !) 
Make tiresome dispute interpreting 
The pitiful oracle ! And where, I pray them 
(Some glutton daubings I at least have seen 
Of sheep and doves and fishes and a feast !), 
89 



POEMS OF PERSONALITY 

Where are the sacred statues of the cult, 
The evidences of a gracious presence, 
Austere indeed but none less favorable. 
Auspicious unto him who knows to burn 
The pious oil and in sacrifice 
To draw the knife athwart the victim's throat? 
Here have I placed upon my palace-walls 
And elevated in a thousand shrines 
The statues of Olympian deities. 
Mine own and many of my kingly race; 
With rescript that the name of God shall be 
Zeus-Father Mithra, no more Jahveh-Son! 

And one thing further, ere I crown success 
With Persian conquest, I shall set the Jews 
To building up anew Jerusalem 
In insult to the Christians utterly! 



90 



PELAGIUS 

Hark! to their persecution hounding me 
From fierce and schism-disrupted Africa 
At instance of PauHnus to the feet 
Of John, good bishop of Jerusalem; 
Where this Orosius, pursuing far, 
Hispanian though he be, in Palestine 
Lifts tongue of accusation: heresy 
The charge which I must face (Celestius 
At Carthage was condemn'd!) even here where Christ 
Faced persecution for an heresy! 
Almost I do believe I am in error. 
Holding in man a natural righteousness; 
When such a spectacle four hundred years 
Hath shown of derogation from the first 
Inspired acceptance of the heart and help 
(Four centuries long, since Christ in the Temple taught !) 
Which He affords. Some sin-original 
Even among Christ-faith-professing spirits 
(Prevailing now as not Christ-face to face) 
Must hamper the Christ-purpose in the soul 
If back to persecution, pagan wise 
As we were Diocletians, savagery 

91 



POEMS OF PERSONALITY 

Of accusation and of punishment 

Men hark as though they all a Christ would kill — 

Ay, witness the fury struck and took between 

Their Donatists and Augustinians, 

Too inexcusable of either part ! 

And now this hounding, as a dog the deer. 

Of me who in the Holy Land of Christ 

Turn to defend me at the feet of John! 

Yet fairly, in my turn! I need not yield 
To falsity but that their ways are false. 
I need not brand the heart of humankind 
For all-unrighteous, but because a few 
Now for the moment have their fangs in me 
(Oh, John is nobler than their Augustine!). 
Grant them, their hearts are hard, lost each his soul'. 
Should that truth touch the speculative point. 
Destroy my doctrine of a clean-will'd choice. 
An unpredestinate and native grace 
Of recognition of the right-in-God; 
And force upon the thought their grace-of-God 
Imposed upon a sin-original 
Which (freely, if at all !) must cleave to crime? 
What beggary of reason such would show 

92 



PELAGIUS 

Who argue of our freedom, yea or nay. 
By evidence of fault in me or them! 
For, lo! though I assert the will were free 
To choose God or reject God (holding Christ 
Man's best example of the Godhood-choice 
In outward life, as Christ within Himself 
Was Godhead: not the half-god Arian — 
Wherein with Athanasius am I one). 
And that the nobler in us be to adopt 
The right and true, conforming to the wish 
Of God Who made us that we might be saved; 
Though 1 assert men's moral dignity 
Of voluntary righteousness in God, 
Should any failure here or there of men 
To choose God evidence, in any least. 
The sad compulsion to depravity 
(Proclaim'd of every Augustinian hound) 
Unless God interfere by ceaseless grace 
To bind us to beatitude unwon? 
Or how were God to be supposed asleep 
And negligent of the furtherance by grace. 
Which every moment mundanely would need, 
In leaving to a sole historic spark 
(The flint-fire sole-supposed of Christ-within) — 
93 



POEMS OF PERSONALITY 

However absolutely infinite 
In terms of God's, not man's, eternity — 
Men's faith-upflaring to the heat of truth; 
A negligence demonstrable, I ween, 
Insoforth as of man 't were provable 
That few have faith, that myriad multitudes 
Lack grace and are unchosen but in sin 
Live ever laxly; pleading sins supposed 
Of Adam for a taint inherited 
And blame-exemption by the lapse of God? 
How bears the bad example either way? 
Rather should that within the mind of man 
His impulse to discover and to prove 
The truth, our ever-struggling upwardness 
Of effort to achieve and aid and offer. 
In this life-education given of God, 
Example Christ-like unto all men else — 
The strength and sweetness of the spirit seeking 
And finding in the daily tasks of earth 
The way of earning heaven unslavishly. 
The way of doing well by conscience' light. 
Refute the poor predestinary dream: 
Their waiting watchful for an unsought faith 
By grace, while noway working day by day 
94 



PELAGIUS 

In will, in zeal toward high humanity 

Firm in the following, for active love. 

The Christ-example to be glad and free 

Upstanding reverent beneath the heaven 

Whence God hath sight of hearts and hopeth for us! 

Whence God need never stoop to intervene 

And thrust the thought of Christ by miracle 

(To spoil our splendor of a conscienced soul !) 

Beneath the cravings of our cowardice 

Who crouch and pray but owe no self-respect 

To make us worthy! 

I will have respect 
For man as also for the manful Christ. 
I flee no farther but will face my foes 
(Jerome is of them who was erst my friend) 
Not bitterly; but strive as best I may 
To wake them to that soul-nobility 
Which all men, even this Orosius, 
By dint of Adam-lineage may earn 
In following Christ-example, Him Who faced 
The persecutors not with bitterness 
But this alone: 'They know not what they do!' — 
Face accusation with an heart of proof. 
Knowing God made us nobler than they know! 

95 



CHARLEMAGNE 

I LIKE not that the See of Rome should set 
Sudden and by surprise the Empire's crown 
Upon me as I worshipp'd unaware! 
It was not as with Leo I arranged. 
That he should so assume to consecrate 
With papal benediction power and place 
Which I by birth and by my labors added 
Have earn'd above the people — that the people 
Should hail me Emperor as though because 
A Roman bishop's act empurpled me! 
T is nigh intolerable! We had agreed 
Election by the Romans; whereupon 
A coronation by the Pope of Rome 
Pursuant to mine independent right 
Of power equal to Irene's power; 
Not as some exarch of the See of Rome! 
How have I not befriended this same Leo 
As Adrian before him in my wars; 
Rescued from bodily persecution, purged him 
From accusations of adultery 
By mere acceptance of the sinner's oath! 
And then by solemn trick to be surprised 
96 



CHARLEMAGNE 

Unto reception of the grant assumed 
Where lay no power of granting, save my power 
Supported and sustain'd in every deed 
This pitiful vicegerent of the church ! 
I like it not. I almost had upsprung 
And smote him down for his impertinence; 
But did refrain within the Sacred House 
Before the people. Yet the cunning priest 
Deserved the blow. For by my complaisance 
Hath not he fasten'd on the Empire's crown 
A vassalage to Peter? Shall not Popes 
Assume and shrilly arrogate to heaven 
And over the wide earth a potency 
Temporal, based upon the paltry game? 
A temporal king? Not he; though Constantine 
Half-gave, no doubt; and Pepin liberally 
Gave lands in vassalage! Nay, nay! in my time 
Shall he be vassal for the Exarchate 
And all things else unto the Prankish King; 
Still vassal merely and no lord in least — 
I warrant me, long as my life endure ! 
I take the crown, my right. The Roman people 
At worst elect me by immediate voice 
As peer to any blood-stain'd Byzantine 
97 



POEMS OF PERSONALITY 

And suzerain of exarchs — this the point 
Well to put forth in public lest Irene, 
Bitter at failure of her marriage-plan. 
Attempt the insult of according me 
In Italy pretended vassalage, 
Exarchal office, to appease her priests! 
Yea, Rome and I must threat against the East 
A common front, the Latin with the Frank, 
Whether this Leo's heart be false or no! 

Such, such for indignation at the dream 
(I say not 't is of Leo — yet — I doubt me!) 
How spiritual power upon the earth 
Can of itself sustain a temporal arm 
To cope with sovereigns! Such, for policy 
Preventing rupture! And in sooth my mind 
Knowing the power of spiritual place 
When terms, beyond the tenure of this life. 
Are told of recompense and punishment, 
Ah, anxious to show repentance ere too late 
For certain family deeds (nay, not the crime 
Of that Irene!) and have Popes to plead 
With God for mercy on my sinner's soul — 
My mind is fill'd with piety, with zeal 
,98 



CHARLEMAGNE 

To render unto God a good account. 

Pleasing to Popes sofar as possible, 

Of this my Catholic Empire. The Lombards 

Who menaced Peter's very primacy 

Have fallen before me; and the Saxon hordes. 

Their Irmensaiile spoil'd and carried away. 

Have felt the sword and scourge of Gospel strength, 

In baptism faith confessing, else in death 

Drinking the dregs of outlaw'd heathenry! 

And we of mine own kingdom have been set 

To honoring God by ordering our ways 

In law, in learning and in righteousness. 

I love not Popes. But, unlike yon Irene, 

Repent and pray and am Christ's champion. 

Protector, propagator of the Word! 



99 



ERIGENA 

BoETHius hath indeed to us of Rome 

(I mean, the genus of the Latin Church 

And, here among the Franks, our clerkly kind) 

Open'd a new possession spiritual 

In strict transference from the tortuous Greek 

Unto the simpler, easier-understood 

Vernacular of the Latin hierarchy. 

Yet and that learned scholiast gave alone 

One aspect of the ancient, pagan thought: 

The logic, dialectic organon 

Of Aristotle, him the Stagirite. 

'T is true, how dialectic enters in 

To every utterance of the blessed lips 

Ambrose and Augustine and Gregory, 

Jerome, the glorious fathers. But no word 

Is open to the Church of any such 

Who in the Eastern language wrote and taught; 

Whether the blessed fathers or, beyond 

The circle of the saints, some Origen 

Or Alexandrian of Plotinus' school. 

Who seems in much, if not in Christ reveal'd. 

To speak as even Augustine hath spoken 

TOO 



ERIGENA 

Of Godhood and of truths intuitive. 
I would, the whole wide world could read as I 
The Oriental tongue! And here in sooth 
Are works of one, the Areopagite, 
Erstwhile deliver'd from Byzantium's king 
(I mean no disrespect — an Emperor!) 
As gift to Louis, him whose Palace School 
Under the patronage of Charles, the young, 
I teach and govern. Surely, too, these works 
Speak much of unity of man with God — 
To the misery and madness of our times 
Sore needed! Like the sage Boethius 
(He died, no doubt, for too great honesty!) 
Will I unf earing overset the Greek 
Unto the time's vernacular of Rome; 
And so do service to a future time. 

But, whilst I serve by setting forth in speech 

The reasonings of an old authority. 

May I not seem to yield unto the times' 

Servility of mind and grant with men 

The fond supremacy beyond our own 

Of the reasonings of the fathers: how our reason 

Should follow, imitate but step by step 

lOI 



POEMS OF PERSONALITY 

With phrase and passage out of every book 

The earlier opinion; that our mind 

Be nought unless some image of a mind 

Long dead and utter'd unto long-lost years! 

With reverence I say that Augustine, 

Though dwelling in the Scriptures, gave to these 

New meaning by the glossae of his soul. 

Not slavishly repeating to his times 

A truth long-known and stagnant but, by force 

Of demonstration in a new-born light 

Anew achieving of the truth of God 

A mundane emanation. And shall I 

But copy him the Areopagite 

Or Augustine, or Ambrose, Gregory 

With what of scholarly acumen comes 

In earnest reverence; or, reverently 

Still, of the substance of the fathers' truth 

(And so, of God's) allow new worlds of reason 

From earlier infinite storages to flow 

And self-illuminate our weariness? 

Why rest on old ensample, when within me 

I feel fresh insight, sense intuitive 

Of Godhood in the wilderness of world? 

For was not reason primal in all things 

102 



ERIGENA 

(Quote my Magister, my Discipulus!), 
Prior in nature to autiiority 
Which, though transmitted from the earHest time 
Yet, baseth in a secondary source, 
A past which was not at the first of earth? 
And say not, as with him the Stagirite 
Or those who follow him, that God above 
Give exhibition of authority 
By primal being and a truth reveal'd 
Wheretoward our nature yearneth. For in truth 
The absolute God, being utterly o'er-all 
Without division, doth not of Himself 
Ensample set and sheer authority 
But, only in the creature, as our reason 
Being emanation, God as self-beknown, 
Exhibiteth within and to itself 
The very absolute authority. 
The Godhood of the essence of the man, 
With Christhood of the Father. As did he 
Of Hippo, he the Areopagite, 
Plotinus even, even Origen, 
Shall I in governing my Palace School 
At all cost and at every danger dare 
Assert the ultimate authority 
103 



POEMS OF PERSONALITY 

Of the spirit rational, the logos in us 

Still world-establishing. Boethius, 

Who oflFer'd to the Western world the truths 

Of ancient dialectic, none the less 

Despite the teachings of the Stagirite, 

Declared a modern and a Western truth, 

The present comfort of philosophy 

For guide within religion unto honor 

With self-respect and yielding not to pride: 

And suffer'd of Theodoric therefor. 

May I offend not and be longer spared! 

But, come what may, the substance of our God 

Reason, and ever insight logical — 

Shall I declare: for that my mind believes ! 



104 



ABELARD 

Ah, every day and every hour, dispute 
And accusation, nowhere any man 
To friend me and protect, not one in the world. 
Save pupils powerless, to support my plea; 
Admirers, yea; but none to lend me aid 
Through year on, year of direst controversy: 
A history of calamities tenfold ! 
Till at the last this sentence of confinement 
For teaching truth! But, at the last and worst, 
This sudden, unexpected refuge oflFer'd 
(First instance of protection shown in life. 
First kindness to the oppress'd from any man 
Whose power could make the kindness practical) 
In Cluny and from Peter! Still though half 
Incarceration, judgment of the Pope, 
Yet all the sting and shame absolved away; 
And honorable leisure for devotion. 
For writing (perchance, for teaching?) granted me. 
To end my days of sorrow! Ah, the spirit 
Breaks down within me, melts as ne'er before 
With this new sense of human gratitude 
Calming rebellion; warm humility 
105 



POEMS OF PERSONALITY 

And meek acceptance taming arrogance! 
I wonder at this Peter. But a man 
Hath mediated 'twixt an hostile world 
And Peter Abelard. The guardian name 
Hath come between me and my punishment 
With intercession. And I render thanks: 
Thanks to the Saint and thanks to him of Cluny; 
But, save a few with powerless goodwill, 
Heart-thanks to no-one else the wide world through! 

Oh, but the arrogance yet, yet uprearing; 
The sense of persecution and the blame 
With which I all the universe upbraid 
Save him of Cluny and the favoring Saint: 
Not Christ, not Helo'ise excused at heart 
From some misjudgment — oh, the blasphemy! 
When, when shall I be soul-regenerate 
And inly humble; then to see my life 
As Christ perchance hath seen it, or as Peter 
May see and disapprove and yet in pity 
Move him of Cluny for the baptism's sake 
To ward off and redeem from obloquy? 
And Helo'ise? I, in my chastities 
Enforced of mutilation, to her love 

1 06 



ABELARD 

Have long assumed the saintlier arrogance 
Of sham asceticism; when my lust 
It was which brought her to disgrace and dread! 
Not hers the lust: that lamb unto the wolf! 
And hers the love, who out of all mankind. 
Even after such betrayal, clove to me 
And every hour of these long sorrowful years 
(Small blame, to call me cold, unsympathizing!). 
Hath look'd to me for spirit-comfortings. 
Advice and admonition momently 
In every rule, in every utterance 
Of counsel sent unto her fond request. 
And she, her woman-appetite aroused 
(Hath she not so, with dignity, avow'd?) 
Once and for aye from virgin innocence. 
How hath she borne in spirit as in body 
To bide thus faithful to her pledge in God? 
I tremble now before such purity! 
But how atone, how even in sooth repent me. 
Where sense of men's injustice rankles yet 
(Of Bernard his untrain'd impertinence. 
Who argues with a scholar though unschool'd) 
And only from the world an one or two, 
A mistress-wife, an abbot-advocate, 
107 



POEMS OF PERSONALITY 

Can in my soul command my soul's respect? 
O blessed Peter, I was born to strife, 
To swift, sharp rancor and the hard retort; 
My truth a proud possession and my love 
A need of proud possession secretly! 
When love was known, discover'd of men's eyes, 
Felt I indeed some pride of public conquest. 
The demonstration of my powers of lust 
(Ah, in dispute, the public power of reason 
Reflecteth glory on the disputant!). 
But yet a chillness to love's ecstacy, 
A weariness at such a common thing 
(Which fain were private, secret treasure-trove) 
As pass'd from tongue to tongue, a ten day's wonder! 
How the hot joy was turn'd to ashen fear 
For shrewd disgrace and the contempt of men — 
Confirm'd in the conclusion: treachery 
To match mine own and violence little worse. 
And then the long, long years of bitterness. 
Silent rebuke toward her whose beauty lured me 
Unto mine own destruction and whose heart 
Was burning-pure, a fiery-fme rebuke 
Though dumb, a blame enduring to mine own! 
O Heloise, I now confess in Christ 

108 



ABELARD 

There hath not been, for all thy mind's revolt 

From service of the Saints, a sweeter soul 

For Mary than doth rule thy Paraclete 

To Christ's best glory. And my claim to God 

Must base in being, through thee, the human means 

Of showing thus the splendor of a faith: 

Even if the faith, so shrined in heart-of-Eve, 

Be more to me directed than to God 

And therefore pitiful — sith I am I ! 

But, save by faith, I cannot help thee more. 

Farewell ! And may I dwell in death beside thee, 

If so much Cluny friend me at the end! 

Now and to true repentance of the mind 
Which wants renewal, 'neath authority 
(As hers a man's authority hath craved) 
In Cluny. And from Peter shall I find it 
(As she hath found it in my cold advice) 
By temperance and chastity of reason 
Learning toward other minds to bear respect 
Despite misjudgment and impertinence. 
This Bernard may be better than his zeal 
For persecution would proclaim of him. 
For mine was a warfare without sense within 

loq 



POEMS OF PERSONALITY 

Of any wish to win enduring peace: 
Fear, rather, of men's agreement, a desire 
To stand alone in singularity 
Of strange opinion and to base belief 
In demonstration of a paradox; 
In curst citation of the Sic et Nan, 
The disagreement, counter-statement found 
In writings of the fathers, ridding thus 
The thoughts from reverence, whilst within the heart 
The goal of right adjustment was no more 
And all was chaos in an anarchy 
Of self-assertion — which could ne'er be true; 
Because denying every other's truth 
Though yet the very man were measure of it, 
A Bernard even as an Abelard ! 
And God were nothing! If within were reason 
And rightfulness (I never did deny 
The Catholic faith !) yet all upon the tongue 
Was arrogant insistence and contempt 
Spoiling the message or the fruit of peace. 
But now, the new protection breaks the pride 
To gratitude, an homage unforeseen, 
A tribute of the conquer'd character 
Too unexpected when the combat raged 

no 



ABELARD 

And every man's hand was against mine own. 

'T is somewhat the surprise that breaketh through 

The madness of a hfe-time; somewhat also 

The suddenness of release from bodily fear 

When fear had kept me cruel. Right or wrong 

In doctrine, now the citadel of soul 

Hath been surprised to a surrendering 

Of strife, and by a generosity 

Disarm'd where persecution had but steel'd 

To bitterer contention ! — Heloise ! 

From him of Cluny have I learn'd the way 

I could not learn of thee; though thou hast taught it. 

Thou ever, whilst my soul was blind by pride 

To love and love's true lesson in thy soul: 

Thou, mistress and teacher in the path of God! 



Ill 



BERNARD OF CLAIRVAUX 

Oh, fearful failure! Everywhere the arms 

Of Christ defeated; and the glorious host 

Of soldiers of the Cross, in pitiful flight 

Or desperate defence, but one by one. 

Thousands by thousands 'neath the infidel 

Destroy 'd; till only sacrifice remaineth 

In lieu of all the splendors prophecied! 

And, under God, was I, the meek Bernard, 

High priest and prophet of the cataclysm! 

I shrink aghast at visions of dismay 

Brought home and desolatingly retold 

And told again, with curses on my name. 

Of them who hardily escaped and sped 

Hitherward, the mad wreckage of the rout. 

I fear not men's reprisals. Let them come: 

Some crazed, ecstatic, devastated soul 

Of knight or man-at-arms, to tear the cross 

From bosom and on bloody spear impale 

Bernard the sad impostor, false, forsworn! 

Ah, Christ, if only it were such as that, 

A death by martyrdom with them thus shared! 

Scarce, scarce should 1 shrink from it. For to see 

112 



BERNARD OF CLAIRVAUX 

Europe appall'd and stripp'd of glittering knights 
And gleaming soldiers gone to wretched graves 
By rusty tens of thousands, through my fault: 
That is to dwell, O God, as in hell-fire 
On earth and aye anticipate the End! 
Yea, 't is the spiritual pain which easeth not 
For that 't is tongue of mine upon the earth 
Hath stung men to this havoc wantonly! 
Where, now, the sense of sustenance by Thee 
Provided in the preaching: outwardwise 
By miracle, by conversion ; inwardwise 
By truth-assurance and the righteousness 
Of rescuing the Christian warrior-power 
Which, bruised and batter'd of the infidel, 
Threaten'd collapse — as come upon it now? 
Where, now, the human confidence, which seem'd 
So superhuman, so inspired of Thee? 
Lost, lost but with the human panoplies 
Of power and purpose to effect the right; 
Gone with the hope of victory! — O God, 
Must human faith be brave for works alone. 
For outward evidence to heat the hope; 
And pale to skepticism and blasphemy 
Because the expected earth-accomplishment 
113 



POEMS OF PERSONALITY 

Hath somewise else and in another sphere 
Perfected prescience of Thy Providence 
Than in the pettier plan mine hand design'd? 

The pettier plan ! Merely to aid a power 

Grown evil as the veriest infidel 

In purlieus of the worse-than-Moorish stews 

Where Prankish Templar or a Flemish prince 

Oppress'd and pander'd, with disgrace to all 

Call'd Christian, in Thy land of sepulture? 

Merely by tumult of a ribald crowd 

(Their sin-remission crass-miscomprehended), 

Of rough and roystering men and women lewd. 

To aid in riveting on the Holy Town 

Of Thy nativity an iron guile 

And craft and lust of power which no bright 

cross 
On breast or armlet could redeem in men 
Unless by Thine inscrutable chastisement? 
Ah, holy in petty purpose for the nonce 
By exaltation of the moment's oath 
The takers of the Cross; and holier now 
(Their sin-remission splendidly achieved) 
Who, sacrificed unto Thy chastisement, 
114 



BERNARD OF CLAIRVAUX 

Lie dead, unburied on the parching sands 
Or in the rocky gorges food for kites — 
Of these the bones are noble; for they fell 
Obedient to the larger call of God 
Transcending human purpose: and are saved! 
So, of the many miracles: no whit 
Dishonor'd in the infinite defeat 
Of that they seem'd to guarantee to men! 
So, of the preaching: righteous to the last, 
O God, that I discover by Thy grace 
(And firm shall preach) the infinite chastisement 
Of them who perish'd; and of us surviving 
Who see our homeland desolate, our knights 
And men-at-arms no more, and every hearth 
Mourning a vacancy! Oh — should there come 
An halt, a blind, a man possess'd, to ask 
Anew the healing miracle — with faith 
Even as or e'er thine awful punishments. 
Shall I but pray: and Thou wilt ope the eyes 
Or cure the cripple or cast out the fiend; 
That, when comes knight-at-arms to hew me 

down. 
The miracle-achieved shall turn his soul ! 
And, with me openly upon his knees, 
J«5 



POEMS OF PERSONALITY 

That cow'd crusader, humbled utterly 
And saved, shall pray Thee as in brotherhood 
Of chastisement accepted: I and he 
Alike rebuked, alike to sight restored. 



116 



FRANCIS OF ASSISI 

God's poor; and Jesus Christ the chiefest of them, 

Supreme in service, if but ill-equipp'd 

(Unless in Godship!) so to minister; 

I, little friend Francesco, like to Christ 

In poverty, if wanting Godship to it! 

For poverty at least, that power is mine: 

No stone's-weight of an impotency, born 

(Mock-Damiano, ever to be built!) 

Of the need of self-protection : burdensome. 

Or, by the privilege of personal stand 

Against aggression, arrogating pride; 

No vaunt of value for myself to hoard 

Of world's respect, precluding brotherhood 

With very lazar; and such brotherhood 

By love, my high responsibility 

Unburdensome, uplifting everywise! 

Could one but love world-riches, then, o' sooth. 
Might service lie with such in squandering 
To charitable use; as, at the first, 
I flung the proud cloak off to clothe the back 
Of starving valor! Nay, but love no whit 
117 



POEMS OF PERSONALITY 

May dwell with pride: and pride is property. — 

Ah ! little sisters of the woods and fields, 

Sweet flowers; or tiniest songsters unto God, 

Ye brother birds! with ye community 

Of goods and heart is mine: free from all care 

Of worldly profit, free so to praise Christ 

As joy and blessed beauty in ye praise Him; 

And joy in me (if scarce the wonder-gift 

Of beauty) praiseth ever constantly. 

Lo! here in the forest-hermitage I harbor 

(Alvernia, where kindness lets me lie) 

Like bird or flower by the dew of God 

And bounty of the heavenly hand of Christ 

Meekly sustain'd at table of the poor. 

The wild, the free fraternity of joy. 

And with my heart and tongue 1 'd praise the Lord, 

Like as the bird or blossom praiseth Him; 

I, fain to make laudation now aloud 

With thanks for every creature; most of all, 

Perchance, for me that I thus may ensoul 

Some hours of contemplation, whilst the body. 

My soul's dull, plodding bondman (hands and 

feet 
Scarified and world-weary), take that rest 
ii8 



FRANCIS OF ASSISI 

Which labor-long infirmities require 
Ere once again to labor it return. 

Ah! pride pervert, maybe, and property 
This rest from labor in a private joy ! 
How deem me poor and free from arrogance 
(How deem mine, love?) who have one hour mine own 
For contemplation of the cure of Christ 
And praises creature-like unto His name: 
When cures of earth, to saving of men's souls 
In freedom of devotion minist'ring. 
Are calling, calling from the neighbor-plain 
Below my mountain, calling to mine heart 
For saving service, as to Christ's own heart 
The world was calling, calling: that He came? 
For thus this love in me, if ne'er in Christ, 
This very love when sensed unto itself 
And felt for spirit-privilege (indeed 
As never in Christ's ministry !) becomes 
I tself a source of arrogance, a pride 
And property which, for the love of love. 
The heart must squander charitably alway 
Or leave the soul in contemplation sunk 
Aloof as never lay the life of Christ 

1 19 



POEMS OF PERSONALITY 

Aloof from sympathy of hand, of feet 

Forever walking over the wide world 

In sacrificial ministry unshod. — 

Ah, woe! then, for mine order'd Brotherhood 

Of souls too rich in love to salve that love 

By urgent sympathy of hand, of feet 

In missioning unto the earth's confines, 

Squander'd to lose itself sufficingly 

In act, in motion-mendicant (creating 

Of other men alms both and love) or labor 

Alms-giving and alms-given to the need 

Of nature, frail and empty save of need — 

In act, nor turn upon itself within 

In contemplation privily and proud! 

Ah, woe! for power and riches spiritual 

(The heritage of them who follow me. 

By my default) ; alas, for arrogance 

Sprung of a human love that finitely 

Must turn upon itself and fail to spend 

Infinitely in service and be poor! 

What have I done, who, turning hearts to love 

And service, have evoked within the soul 

Vainglory of such service and the pride 

Of love-possession, though in Christ enjoy'd? 

120 



FRANCIS OF ASSISI 

The Christly crucifixion (wounded hands 

And wounded feet world-ruptured), caused it this? 

The purpose of apotheosis, through 

Theophany, transfiguring, but wrought it 

That men by God-example (infinitely 

Spending, all-unpossessing) should be prick'd 

To pride of service, wisdom of the tongue 

In praise of His creation, but no jot 

Impell'd to service of the hands and feet 

In self-unsaving, perfect poverty? 

Are these: these marks of helplessness in man. 

Of dream-tied desuetude of hands and feet 

Self-suaging (these toil-blister'd hands and feet 

Way-scarified which here luxuriate 

Taking their ease aloof from cures of men) : 

The outcome human and contemptible 

(If anything in life can earn contempt?) 

Of those world-wounded but unwearying 

Crucified hands and feet, mine ecstasy 

Perceives in vision through the forest-boughs 

Cross-like and quivering with an heavenly light. 

His stigmata of utter sacrifice? 

Down from my mountain to the humbler plain 

121 



POEMS OF PERSONALITY 

(Now at the last as when Christ call'd me erst 

To lifting of San Damiano's stones!) 

I haste me; here upon my feet and hands — 

I feel them for spur both and punishment — 

The marks of impotence, the stigmata 

Envision'd of Christ's perfect sacrifice. 

For hands and feet from now unto the end 

(Not flower-like, bird-like — though perchance they 

too 
Feel care and failure? — nor for private power 
Of love-possession but, with fault avow'd 
Of failure, insufficiency to serve) 
Shall serve Him as at table of the Lord 
From Whom life all is alms, at beggary 
Of love, for love's sake: not for any joy 
In primal brotherhood with bird or flower 
(Save labor unto death be joy and praise 
Permitting song aloud an labor cease not?) — 
Ah! not for any joy with bird or flower 
Of little friend Francesco praising God. 



122 



FREDERICK II, HOHENSTAUFEN 

Magnificence almost miraculous 
Of promise and performance I command : 
I by a word redeeming from the blame 
Of Paynimry this Holy Sepulchre 
And these waste places of Jerusalem! 
Not armies nor the valor of Christendom 
In decades hath accomplish'd for the Cross 
What sane sagacity and temperate zeal 
With tact of reason and a wise respect 
Toward honorable enemies have wrought: 
I treating honorably with the chief 
Of Paynimry, opponent of the Cross 
No doubt, none less a king to whom respect 
Is ever due from Order's champions 
Of faith and of right dealing in the world. 
King, quotha, unto whom respect is due 
Although in arms against the Cause of Truth ! 
King, quotha, hov/ much more to whom respect 
Had been accorded had his cause been mine: 
As Order's champion I of Cross and Truth! 
And am I treated with respect thus due 
To virtue and power and accomplishment 
123 



POEMS OF PERSONALITY 

(A virtue firm beyond ascetic shams. 
And naturally in joyance exercised!) 
In service of the Cross, in thereby saving, 
Not selfishly the soul but, for mankind 
The Sepulchre and sweet Jerusalem 
From infidel defilement? Or am I 
Reviled as outcast, worse-than-Saracen, 
Because, forsooth, my merits make alarm 
To him mischosen Shepherd : Roman wolf 
Rapacious over Christendom and hateful 
Of Christendom's crusading conqueror now? — 
Templars and Hospitalers and the swarm 
Of sycophants pontifical, avaunt! 
Leave to my care the conquest ye but hinder'd! 
Clutch with your claws no crown belonging to me 
By right of royal marriage as by rule 
Of personal possession ! By no Pope 
Nor Papal hirelings shall I be debarr'd 
From kingdom won by king-sagacity. 
Ah, nobler Sultan, rather had my rights 
Drawn warrant and support from thy bared sword 
In honest enmity to overcome 
Than earn establishment from Romish troth 
In bull embodied! — Excommunicate 
124 



FREDERICK II, HOHENSTAUFEN 

(Scorning the priestly, futile interdict 

Which would rob Christendom of all I 've won !) 

I glory in the hatred of a Priest ! 

Kameel ! ah, how might thou and I allied 
Restore world all to order, make of East 
And West conjoin'd a sanctuary of faith. 
Right dealing and respect where such is due! 
What matter if Mohammed or the Pope 
Be God's vice-tyrant, when our meeker Christ 
Gives unto thee or me alike, I ween. 
Leadership in a soul's nobility: 
Thy teacher second only unto him 
Of Mecca, as my Second-unto-None ! 
How were the world revived, if under us 
Jointly and severally controlling earth 
To earth's own good and joyance naturally 
Arose a new religion, vivified 
And vivifying by the soul's release 
Both from this internecine strife of creeds 
And from the incubus of priest and Pope! 
Now, by my vow to serve the Christ's true Cross 
Unservile of the Pharisee of Rome, 
What duty were more chivalrous than this 
125 



POEMS OF PERSONALITY 

To disestablish tyrannies of soul 
And set a loving liberality 
Of generous sympathy with humankind 
Toward every human enterprise and strength 
In stead of priest and wolfly parasite? 
By mine investiture as Knight-at-Arms 
And by this crown of Christ's Jerusalem 
My high inheritance, shall I not swear 
A reign of brotherhood and beauty born 
Of practice and perfection in all arts. 
All ways of exquisite urbanity. 
All understandings of the facts and laws 
Of mystic informations yet occult 
But under such prospective patronage 
Become the illuminating discipline 
Of many? Like justice, shall not poesy 
(With spells and power over spirits of Hell 
Learn'd of the lyric Semite) be for boon 
And birth-gift of men's souls beneath my sway. 
United in a novel Christendom 
Half-Saracenic, half of ancient cults 
(Hellenic or Mithraic, Osirian!) 
Restored; yet wholly in the love of Christ 
And lore of His inheritance transform'd? 
126 



FREDERICK II, HOHENSTAUFEN 

Kameel ! ah, could thy hand but crown me now. 
How graciously might thou and I achieve 
The rebirth of the luminance of soul 
In disestablishment of him of Rome: 
Ascetic dotard, Caiaphas two-faced. 
Frost-blight upon our flower of chivalry! 

Wolf-blight, alas! upon the Christly fold. 
With age-worn fangs still fasten'd in our flesh ! 
Why waste I hours of proselyting here 
In Palestine: a land which well might lie 
Smiling beneath the Paynim scimitar 
For aught concerning Europe; and which best 
Might serve for stimulus of intercourse 
'Twixt Saracen and Christian humanizing 
World-civilization, were our arms withdrawn? 
Why waste I here the hours Gregorius 
Doubtless improves to poison hearts at home 
Against mine orthodoxy, to impugn 
My fair faith and incite a treason in them? 
Why waste I for this bauble of a crown 
(Or publicly to prove my Christianhood 
Forsooth !) such moons as may from all my stars 
Withdraw beneficence; whilst he of Rome 
127 



POEMS OF PERSONALITY 

With subtlest machinations undermines 

My power of empire and ascendancy 

At home? Kameel, ah, never can my home 

Be far from Sicily; nor heart of mine 

Forget the boreal burg that bore my race! 

Let generosity relinquish here 

The conquest, for thy hand to seize again 

The governance which thy straightforward faith 

Hath shown thy due — ay, only with the crown 

When once I have been king'd by mine own hand. 

For then to Rome, to Rome (these mistresses 

May follow whom Kameel hath promised me) ; 

To Rome, and crush to earth with iron heel 

The serpent of the Papacy! To Rome, 

Ruin and devastation in my train! 

That from my throne secure I lean at last 

The hand of brotherhood to thee, Kameel; 

And Christian fellowship; establishing 

Peace and the power of the mind of man 

Athwart all seas; and joyous chivalry. 

The rule of love, true service of the Cross! 



128 



VILLON 

'A vagabond'? — You good Samaritan! 
Peace to your fears of personal compromise ! 
No Provost nor no gibbet will hang you ! 
You catch no foul infection of the plague 
On fur and velvet, ay, and glittering chain 
(The jewel likes me; but, hands off, I say!) 
Helping me here to bread and wine for once 
A bellyful; no vagabondage smirching 
Your stiff, respectable, rich smile and style, 
Unsmirchable by rags and tags of mine! 
Sir, that you seem to fear contagion, shrink 
From contact with the soul you stoop to save 
(Just lifted from the oubliette of Meung 
By grace of Louis whom the Saints preserve!) 
Puts me in mind to make demand what show. 
What substance in this soul of mine you 'd save 
Or rat-bit carcass that contains my soul 
First proved effectual in appeal; what folly. 
Freak, rant and posture of the vagabond. 
The tavern-ruffler and the loose-of-life 
Fresh from an unjust Churchman's dungeoning. 
Drew dignity so to stoop to-purpose, lift 
129 



POEMS OF PERSONALITY 

And lave and lay 'mid dignified disdains 
Raggedness and this outcast of the ways? 
Friend Charles of Orleans cared not as much 
For the better brother-rhymester he well knew! 

Was it some sense that raggedness hath rights 
Of raggedness, a claim to the world's regard. 
In person of the mercer prosperous, 
For its custom of abhorring custom, style 
Of no-style, stiff decorum (call it so) 
Of rough contempt for your decorum's lore? 
Now must the plain corroboration, proof 
That vagabondage but accepts for due 
Merit of vagabondage your main zeal 
In sanctifying, lifting, stiffening me; 
Now must this recognition how your guess 
(Your jest?) proves intuition and I show you 
No spark of gratitude toward grave reform: 
Must such fulfilment turn your love to loathing. 
Sour your pity to this pitiful fear 
Of soul-contamination (did I say 
The fear of the public executioner? 
Far be the insinuation!) that you judge 
(Ah! pardon the harping on the hangman word!) 
130 



VILLON 

Your act no kind cure of a crusted soul 

But a succoring of the harden'd gallows-rogue 

Quite inappropriate to the pledge you hold 

(A vow, mayhap, for some sin? Oh! my master, 

I mean no crime beyond a trick of trade 

Strictly absolved by sharing of the spoil ! ) 

Of Christian charity toward — scarce toward me 

Who, hard of heart as hard of head, laugh back 

Your platitudes preach'd by the Prior, no doubt 

(I heard them at the University, 

A pest on't!) back upon the hide-bound brain 

Of you who not once dream'd there might be souls 

That chose to sin because the sin rings true 

And makes a brawler's ballad ; chose and choose 

To follow a glint, such as the glint may be. 

To the bitterness, the brilliance, of the dust? 

I have an absolute pardon, sir, fire-new; 

And fear not Informations! Let me talk 

In lieu of silence these so many months. 

Tabary swung for too much talk; not I, 

With kind King Louis in my wallet here. 

(Unless? Unless? The girdle likes me much !) 

We part, then? Yet, in thanking you for succor 
131 



POEMS OF PERSONALITY 

Such as my need imperative demands, 
Purseful and bellyful and brain stuflF'd full 
With pictures of the Paradise you paint 
(I'll put it in a rondel overnight!) 
For foil against the Hell I choose to choose; 
Yet, in acknowledging my boon of you — 
I pray you, master, seriously for now! — 
I acquiesce in no disparagement 
Personal of the beggar that I am: 
Who beg from the rich to give to the poor (glib cant 
Is parcel of mine impertinence!) my friend. 
Who take of you by power of abject need. 
For with the satisfaction of the need 
Goes no confession of the need's disgrace! 
Sir, what were your vain wealth and self-resource. 
Even to the sham soul of a prosperous man 
Bound in a vow — ay, by such very test ! — 
But for the vagabondage you abhor, 
Prescription, intercession, to your sins; 
By field for penance or by charity 
Best justifying riches and world-ease? 
I 'm the arch-scapegoat. For 't is a life like mine. 
Life for life's sake, no vulgar gain in view. 
That yields you well-behaved and prudent men 
132 



VILLON 

Prosperity of body as of soul. 
Power in both sorts, through emptiness for me. 
And now: I have not made my way in the world — 
I put a euphemism as would Charles, 
Though with mine own mad irony beneath! 
So, because wealth has stoop'd to succor me, 
I was supposed to wake at last to the worth 
Of custom and convention in the world 
And this the enviable that goes therewith; 
Avow mine error, mend; and make my ways 
Your ways, outstrip remorse by some reform. 
Accept gratuity through zeal to earn 
Position, independence; fain to pay 
Gratuity back and quit the claim? Nowise! 
I grasp gratuity for greed's own right 
An you will: nay, rather, for your soul-need of gift. 
Need of the unreturning charity; 
The worth of ingratitude, and grandest gain 
By the gift of good regardless of good end 
(Unless in salving of your private sin!) 
Succoring raggedness for succor's sake 
And the right of vagabondage to go free. 
Sir — for hyperbole! — 't is you who shrink 
Aside through byeways from the walk of the world 

133 



POEMS OF PERSONALITY 

Even in your 'broider'd costume of world-style: 
You laboring ever for an end in view 
Beyond work; rest and recompense and power: 
Ay, in this world or in a next, a goal ! 
You in your servile goal-dependence spurn 
The world's real way of life for life's sole sake 
(And at the last some mocking testament!) 
Life asking no reward, but just the commune 
In brotherhood of all else who live thus 
Above the fear of failure, quite beyond 
Your personal compromise though bishops starve 
And provosts hang me for the cure of crime! 
'T is your soul starves the soul in me despite 
Alms; for your charity yet shames the soul. 
Ay, 't is because of you who'd work for ends, 
For purposes and prospects, that I fail 
Rescue the world and need your rescuing! 
Sir, did the whole world, Paris here and Blois 
Where Charles lies in his dotage, rotten-ripe. 
And Meung with its good bishop — curse him! 

dwell 
As I have dwelt in wide community 
Giving and taking as I give and take: 
Because, by yielding gift of all we have, 

134 



VILLON 

A ballad or a rondel it may be. 
Deserve we limitless bounty, benison: 
Then were the wisdom of the ways of you 
No wisdom ; stigma of the vagabond 
Your due; and vagabondage recognised 
Wisdom, the moral and the strict and right, 
Sanction'd and custom'd through new peace on earth, 
Needing no gibbets; nor no charity! 

Nay, master, for the succoring have thanks; 
Not thanks as for obligation due the great 
From humble vagabondage, yet for grant 
Of opportunity to loose my tongue 
Long-used to dungeon-silence ! Ah, one's creed 
Needs stating sometimes in a forthright prose 
To rob the rats of breakfast and exalt 
The beggar a little above his bread ! I go 
Ranting, profaning — if you call it still 
A blasphemy, what care I ? Write me down 
For the Provost's galaxy of cunning scamps 
(In faith, the Provost knows me very well! 
And by more names than one the pardons read 
Of blest King Louis whom the Saints uphold ! ) 
This scamp a cunningest; who hoodwink once, 

»35 



POEMS OF PERSONALITY 

Never again so long as wrath endure! — 
'Heretic'? 'Platonist fellow'? You'd retract 
Half your donation? Take it, in despite 
Of the truth of this I 've just exhorted you 
Of the utter thanklessness of poethood! 
What? No resentment? I will keep the gift; 
Count so much toward the cure of your kind soul, 
Respectable, prosperous, but none the less 
Samaritan toward graceless vagabonds! 
My duty to the Provost when you meet ! — 
Nay, by your leave, the chain and jewel too! 



136 



CHARLES V 

Oh, vast, imperial and vain regret 
Wherewith am I tormented ; this mine office 
(Whose woes and burdens would I fain put off 
For sack-cloth of the cloister of the soul) 
Distracted with the mad, rebellious wars, 
The heresies internecine sprung of him 
With whom, when at the Diet sore blaspheming 
Him held I in my doom-pronouncing power, 
I kept a pledge, an oath misfortunate 
Of too secure return unto his friends; 
A pledge miskept with heretics, an error 
Which very faith and truth from out the earth 
(Unless God by new servants intervene) 
May some day drive and utterly destroy: 
Witness the shameful tolerance decreed 
To which I yield consent in sad defeat ! 
Ah, woe! that I, by private troth compell'd, 
A fancied individual honor bound. 
As Emperor with God's great world in charge 
Thus falsely and thus faithless to my trust 
Bare sanctity of a fealty but human 
Above the duty and service owed to God ! 
137 



POEMS OF PERSONALITY 

'T is this wliich drives me now to my despair 

And proves me fit but unto abdication 

(Though still be many a task to undertake — 

First, first to drive the French from ravished Metz!), 

Acknowledging by penance in abasement 

The ever-cumulating consequence 

In spiritual pestilence, alas! 

Born of my soul's infection when I proudly. 

Mistakenly to privilege of reason 

Clove in a knightly, upright honestness 

Forsooth as my misguided judgment held; 

Though God's imperial obligation urged me 

(And many a secret, sacred hint from Rome!) 

Unto the perjury for Christ's faith's sake! 

Ah, thus the Holy Father's legates prove it 

With closet-exhortation hour by hour 

My fault indubitable; whilst, too late, \ 

I can but now resolve my soul to save, 

Sobeit possible to the steward fruitless. 

In cloister'd meditation to the end 

That earth shall shake under a surer sway! 

How miserable the frowardness of man! 
How pitiable, were it not so base, 

138 



CHARLES V 

Mine insolent self-reliance, when the world 
Had sudden need of new obedience, 
The Christian need of crime unquestioning 
When by the Church commanded! I was bom 
Heritor of a thousand hard-won years 
Wherein the individual sanctity 
Of personal oath (for all the cunning tongue 
Of Machiavelli with the serpent-craft!) 
Had for a bond of troth 'twixt man and man 
Securely been establish'd; that my soul 
With sense of high-achieving chivalry 
(No fealty absolving them beneath me 
From knightly dealing with the least below!) 
Was nurtured and sustain'd within a world 
Where honor only, save a saving creed, 
Seem'd worthy of a kingly character 
Too often forced by circumstance untoward 
To tyrannies still honorably plann'd. 
And into such a world was I indeed 
Born to an universal heritage 
Of power well-nigh imperial; then, by gift 
Of God's grace and the election crown'd o'er-all 
With absolute opportunity to rule 
And guard the world unto the glory of Christ; 
139 



POEMS OF PERSONALITY 

And absolute responsibility 
In temporal things, the comings and the goings. 
The words and deeds (so be they honorable) 
For king-command subjected to my will: 
My wish, the heir-adopted gerentwise 
For overt will of God; and at my hand 
The Holy Father to pronounce of well 
Or ill within our body spiritual! 
What outlook had been nobler, wiselier plann'd 
To make of man, of me the Imperial King, 
Paragon of a splendor rightly ruling 
Each rising and each setting 'neath the sun? 
What heed, the hates of Francis or his warfares? 
What heed, the machinations many a time 
Of England or the Paynim at the gates 
To fend, when with an all-imperial statehood 
And principalities earth-numberless 
Was I for praise and blame ripely endow'd 
A steward to an heavenly mastership? 
Yet was I froward, too man-blind to see 
And so accept the honor-withering flame 
Of Christ's new dispensation as it leap'd 
A lightning-tongue to my new age on earth; 
I was too knightly-proud (a Sigismund 
140 



CHARLES V 

With that Bohemian who came to nought 
Did better in his bitter perjury!), 
I was too prince-upright alway to allow 
Within the fox-skin of a Romish priest 
The real, infallible holy-fatherhood 
Whose guidance were unerring. Stood I forth 
Against desires of Clement, sack'd his Rome 
With soldiers of the brood of Wittenberg 
And flung in prison his person sacrosanct 
(In sin begot and crown'd in simony!) 
Or kept faith with a traitor to Christ's church: 
The same inestimable error made; 
The pride of individual kinglihood, 
The knight-on-oath, the manhood-chivalry 
Merely — when every tittle of human judgment. 
Of self-reliance 'gainst authority. 
Had rightly in God's vice-gerent drown'd away 
To rise above the flood of dim opinion 
(With fear of the shame of blushful Sigismund!) 
And maelstrom of the privy conscience-gleam 
To firmament and white, unfaltering light 
Of Christ-resolved perplexity, by rescript 
Indicted of the Pope-authority 
For sign of the new-born epoch upon earth 
141 



POEMS OF PERSONALITY 

(Obedience now in lieu of kinglihood) 
Releasing, overriding the mere troth-plight 
Of earthly knight and mundane Emperor! 

monk of Wittenberg, whose arms but now. 
Despite mine honor-prizing ail-too dear, 
Drove me from Innsbruck to a foul disgrace. 
How have I taken thy part; in holding back 
The clouds of omen'd priest-craft-tyranny 
(So useful too in mine estates of Spain !) 
Brought down the deluge of a civil strife 

With victory to thy crime! Though thou be dead 
Too late to stay the damage of thy daring, 
Hearest thou not in Hell (where I soon with thee 
May for my fatal frowardhood aye anguish!) 
The tramp of thy fiend-legions, I first loosed 
When for the right of conscience of a king 

1 kept against a Pope's divine desire 

Mere oath and honor? I my soul had saved 
From everlasting torment; I the earth 
Preserved from everlasting sacrilege 
(May God through His new heirs yet intervene: 
My deep, dread, heartless son, my brother mighty!) 
Had I example set of absolute faith, 
142 



CHARLES V 

Endured disgrace, the private perjury 

Of burning thee in life as now thou burnest; 

And sacrificed my temporal fame to God: 

The dedication (which the times demand 

In their new culture of a tyranny 

To match rebellion) which I felt too dear 

Till now in vain! O monk of Wittenberg, 

Whose Hellish power perchance bewitch'd my spirit, 

A king even and an heart imperial 

Hath acted as by conscience-fealty. 

Thy motive in rebellion; and must feel 

(For honor lieth in God's authority!) 

How miserable the vast regrets of men! 



143 



BACH 

An earnest piety preventeth me 
(Dear God! but there are moments of despair. 
As hours of exaltation verily!) — 
An earnest piety preventeth me. 
If I may meekly boast a grace of Christ, 
From trivial petulance. The patronage 
Of my respected prince enableth him 
Who serveth loyally the churchly muse 
To labor without fear of too strict want 
In effort toward the heights; undestitute 
Yielding his tongue to utterance sublime. 
So much as may be in the depths of him 
Half-inarticulate, without dismay. 
And can the servant of a favoring prince. 
Afforded with the daily provenance 
For family provision and the fees 
From funeral performance, crave of right 
Anything further — maintenance, reward 
Or recognition? For, behold! I brood 
Not quite in irony but realizing, 
If scarce with snug complacence, gratefully 
Indeed mine ease of fortune by God's help 
144 



BACH 

Assisting mine ambition to speak amply 
Tlie music in me for acknowledgment 
Of heaven's favor! Shall not daily dole 
Suffice, with something of a shrewd respect 
From all less courtly folk, to crown the Court's 
Composer and Precentor of the School? 
'T is true that of the Bachs mine own success 
Is somewhat over average; that my name 
(In shame I smile, the fact perforce avowing!) 
Is gradually growing, sure I see. 
More widely known than any of my kin; 
Even as, maybe, my music richlier moveth • 
Than music hitherto in homelier days 
Composed, perform'd of my Thuringian clan.' 
And is not this enough of outward show; 
And comparable quite to my deserts. 
Sufficing to permit the spirit to sing 
Who in herself cares nothing for these things 
Save as the bodily life hath need of them? 
Mine organ and my clavichord apart 
Can take in idler hours from mine hand 
The meaning of mine heart which moveth me 
So much, so almost unaccountably 
With seeming-holy fervor; and in my work 
•45 



POEMS OF PERSONALITY 

Which busies me by grant of God and man, 
God giveth satisfaction. Then, what more? 

It is not that the pettier jealousies 
Of consistory or of scholars clash 
Too much with inspiration (an we call 
My yearning to compose in piety 
Church-themes an inspiration?) nor the cares 
Of many, many mouths given mine hearth 
For succor and support (my wife here yieldeth 
Help meet unto the need) cling me too close 
For freedom. These are things of human hate 
And human love, the common privilege 
Or burden, it may be, of all mankind 
Each man in sort; which, though they move me 

not 
To wrath nor wantonness, yet endlessly. 
As I must feel in mine especial part 
And privacy of pure musicianhood, 
Contribute to a reverential zeal 
In service of a Love by sacrifice 
Triumphant over Hate: a service couch'd 
In sequent-harmonies canonical; 
Each tone, in yielding place, affording proof 
146 



BACH 

Of purport consonant, although diverse; 

And thereby passion pictured without pain 

Of self-reluctance in the yielding note; 

And thus a symbol of the art 1 'd owe, 

Its very image and presentment, given 

For stimulus within the daily round 

Which else had been, or fain had seem'd, at 

surd 
To mute mine utterance in soul's despite. 
That, though I picture Passion, no complaint 
(More than in Christ was personal complaint 
Though all in victory was yielded up !) 
Of petty cark, responsibility 
Nor any sort of hindrance, can arise 
Within my spirit whose natural pietism 
(I mean not any creed unorthodox!) 
By grace of God as I may meekly claim 
Preventeth, as I 've said, all petulance 
Or derogation from humility; 
Whate'er the artist-irony, despair 
Or exaltation which may dwell therewith. 
Yet sometimes are there stirrings (very Christ 
Appeal'd unto the Father!) — might not God 
Achieve through music something of a truth, 
147 



POEMS OF PERSONALITY 

Some more replete harmoniousness, maybe. 

Which pettiness and privacy ahke, 

For all the incessant motion of the mind 

And aggregation of the scriven'd sheaves 

Of the music-elemental culture-heat. 

Seem doom'd to smother; He working for the truth 

(As God through Luther work'd beyond the man 

Two centuries now since, unto all time!) 

In some way largelier, more to reach mankind 

(Haply my Mass may reach more creeds than 

mine!) 
With universal scope, than now by me; 
And yet I be His instrument, as now 
This organ is mine instrument of soul? 
Dear God! mine were Thy Power if so wouldst 

Thou 
Vouchsafe to me, the henchman of Thy song, 
A mission, universal angelhood. 
The masterful apostleship to lands 
Beyond our sunset lying or to times 
Franchised, enlighten'd far beyond these days 
Of niggard skepticism and the clouds 
Of creed-made tumult of the nations rent 
With bitterness of half-belief in Thee 

148 



BACH 

Its churchly, temporal establishments 

At variance each in jealousy! If Thou, 

Arrived at majesty in purports new, 

Wouldst let me speak when Christ were else a 

name 
As for mistake and failure; to bring back 
The lost of Israel from their sands of cant 
By music of the cosmic fructifying 
Of Thy sphere-motions, as the years to-come 
Shall learn them for the thoughts within Thy mind 
Who veilest in all things else Thy Heart from man 
Save Law and architectured Harmony ! 
Dear God ! if Thou couldst let me know this glory 
Within me of futurity alarged, 
If only while 1 work and rear, for Thee 
Alone, the uplifts of an art no man 
Hath yet in understanding! Oh! for, God, 
I feel, if humbly, that within my moods 
And ways of counterpoint there lurk such forms 
Of intricate coincidence of tone 
As even favoring princes would contemn 
For reason of a novelty inborn 
(A Reformation, unconservative; 
Iconoclastic of mere piety!); 
149 



POEMS OF PERSONALITY 

Which subtler, curious thing of symphonies 
And chordal canonism will scarcely come. 
Confounding congregations, from the hand 
Of native impulse wholly without help 
Of public exploitation, as at Worms 
Men's mortal opposition brought to birth 
The appeal from self to God. Ah, if from God 
Be sympathy expected, it is well. 
And if to God be every hour appeal 
As now in anguish of the splendor-spirit 
His bounty puts upon me, it is well. 
But might not God reveal such sympathy. 
Accept and answer outwardly the appeal 
(Not only with the fees of funerals — 
Pardon the tragic irony of man ! — 
Or birthday ode upon some paid command) 
In here and there insistence of a prince 
On better than the best, demand of men 
For fictions to confound a choiring throng? 
It sure may be that God Himself hath ways 
Of stimulation unperceived of him 
(Mine organ knoweth not the reason of it 
Though rendering right the urgence of my soul !) 
Of stimulation unperceived of him 
150 



BACH 

Who followeth the gleam and still appeals; 
Ways from within, yet also plausibly 
By help unseen without: the future age 
Which jealousies of churches generate, 
Wherewith all earth's at labor and whereto 
A man who loneliest strives may heart-attain 
And dwell with unaware? Did even he 
Incarcerate in Wartburg ever dream 
Of Germany enfranchised, celebrant 
As latterly, of his two hundred years? 
But, oh! the open conflict and the power 
Of emperies array'd against the man! — 
With me, a scholar or a consistory ! 

Nay, nay! I have spoken with God and He hath heard 

me 
Out of the mood of pietist despair 
And struggling exaltation ever mine! 
Nay, nay! There is a work unto mine hand 
Wherethrough a satisfaction and a sense 
Of universalism stimulating 
A soul fuIfiU'd, man's work unto mine hand 
In training of my sons (wherewith my wife 
Were more than merely helpful) and at school 

151 



POEMS OF PERSONALITY 

Some simpler truth to teach, passing adown 
The Bach tradition out of Thiiringen. 
The Christ, the Luther, I may celebrate 
And please my prince; but from myself appeal 
Not publicly 'mid hostile emperies; 
Yet privily: leaving the rest to God! 



152 



FICHTE 

Rise up, rise up, O Teutons, and cast off 
The Corsican; from ashes of the soul 
Spring forth, fresh-Phoenix-like, and strike to ground 
The towering eagle! Be the nation born 
Of German folk to grasp a birthright-earth. 
The heritage of men ! Assert our strength 
And claim to place in the sun ! — But be there bounds 
To just ambition and to vaulting power 
A bourn of self-restraint: retrieving earth 
By virtue of men's mutual respect 
From these the shambles of the righteous strife, 
The terrible probation needed now. 
For, fellow-men, what saving were there made 
Of earth, if from the tyranny o'erthrown. 
The dragon's seed but of a fiery wrath 
Had birth and in our throes of sacrifice 
But strife and strife were bodied everywhile? 
Leap to the freedom-carnage — there is need ! 
But hold within your hearts the brotherhood 
(My creed must teach it, an ye understand!) 
Of all who are, the stranger even as ye, 
Exponents of the Godhead ! Feel the truth 

153 



POEMS OF PERSONALITY 

In absolute selfhood underlying each 
Of Gaul as Teuton ! Fight, sith fight we must. 
The true war, slaughtering them the despot's hordes 
But that for Prankish as for German youth 
A new-enfranchised western neighbor-state 
Smile at ye o'er the Rhineland! Oh, what grief. 
Were once this splendid fervor of our folk 
For freedom and for opportunity. 
The wide world through, that spirit and spirit-truth 
(Mistake not strength of law for despotism; 
Well-knit, enlighten'd rule, for arrogant will!) 
In each establish'd state, self-regulate 
And neighbor-independent, overtly 
Alone should reign — what desecrating shame. 
Were this, the spirit-of-uplift in us now, 
Which my poor words assist in stirring-on, 
Were generous patriotism made the mask 
For furious world-subjection ! Shall we fight 
Beyond the mountains of a German mark? 
No, never beyond the Rhineland save to serve 
The Frank by ruin of the despot there! 
Shall Germany enfranchised prove a yoke 
(A bitterer despotism than before) 
To Frank, Iberian — as this crew hath been 

154 



FICHTE 

Of him call'd Imperator — and blood-lust 
Inflame us to be scourge of half the earth, 
A second Hunnish plague of Attila? 
Far be it from us! Rather had my words 
Been smother'd in my throat, before their time 
Choked down ere utterance, than my battle-taunt 
Be taken for a cry of conquest here! 
Brethren and fellowmen! Your enemies 
Are fellows also. Let not Germany 
For dint of one good deed blot out in the end 
Heart-sense of wrong and right : as ill should be 
(Alas! as now I fear it of our fury!) 
Were sword and shot to be world's arbiters! 
Ah! vision of a justice beyond ours: 
Some overnational tribunal set 
(The national privacy alway preserving!). 
Some permanent conclave as of judges (each 
Race-representative, by rulers chosen) 
Arm'd only with the solemn treaty-oath 
(Unsmirchable in honor to a world!). 
Which no necessity could bid us break, 
Of nation each with nations; to submit 
Unto such rational arbitrament 
The burden of dispute: that thus our shares 
155 



POEMS OF PERSONALITY 

Were beaten out of swords, and reaping-hooks 
Be bent of spearheads; none be need of arms 
Save guarding a law and order national 
Against the evildoer! Thus, thus, o' troth, 
Liefer than in arbitrament of dread 
And death, were glory of our egohood 
Achieved. Ah, friends! I have through my best days 
(Who now by stress of tyrannies am driven 
To this high ranting, rousing up the land) — 
Through my best days have urged the inmost truth. 
Scarce as of revolution by the mob 
Nor as of conquest extra-national 
But, of a strength of order, holding fast 
For health domestic as for race-respect 
A peace, that universal spirit-hood 
Which binds all hearts together, keepeth faith 
By honor and by generosity 
Where oaths are (nay, where oaths are needed not 
For honor) between man and man, and holds 
One common intuition of God-kind 
For basis of achievement. If our souls. 
Each in its kind, must personally soar 
To splendor of privacy, oh, not by will 
Infljcted on the weaker but, by love 

136 



FICHTE 

In art, in poetry the master-mind 
(A Goethe, Schiller, surely showeth ye!), "^ 
Through cultural appreciation proven 
Shall ease him of ambition! If our souls 
Leap to the armament, O men, have care 
Of the future culture of men's brotherhood 
Which heeds well frontiers, in forbearance proud, 
Deals fairly with our common humanhead! 
Were it a dream-chimera? Must we choose 
Or such enslavement as the Corsican 
Hath planted on our necks; else or commit 
Our children and our children's children after 
To bitter armament, the frantic strife. 
The desperate overbearing? No ! That crime. 
That world-crime worst against our fatherhood 
Be far from this the spirit-fatherland! 
And if bad hearts arise who would forget 
Man's common birthright of the absoIute-souI 
Alike in each, 'soever otherwise 
Be tongue from tongue; and if they conquest cry 
And tyranny to desolated hearths 
(Where, brotherhood forgot, no fatherland 
Can claim a sonship) then to them turn ye, 
O generations, not with lackeying ear! 
157 



POEMS OF PERSONALITY 

But strongly daunt them with the reason-claim 

Of generous furtherance I teach ye now: 

I who must take, in all humility. 

This risk, of one who rouseth in men's hearts 

The tempest of an hatred, that it burn 

Too hot to be extinguish'd but may lie 

Forever smouldering, ah, flickering up 

(Which faith forefend !) with breath of policy ' 

And arrogant statecraft alway! — Yet be yours 

The claim of aspiration spiritual. 

The mission of emancipation now; 

Carrying not desolation but relief 

From burden; with the liberty of truth. 

The freedom each to dwell in liberty 

With truth for helpmate! Friends, the hour is come 

(Now stirs the splendid Slav's new-saving strength! 

The noble English, guardians of the seas, 

Hover with white-wing'd aid!) — the hour is come 

Of Germany's deliverance. Go ye forth; 

Smite once and greatly smite: and smite no more! 



158 



SCHOPENHAUER 

The hour is bed-time; but the wine is good. 
Warming, yet almost wholly feverless. 
Yon viols sing-it soothingly, the 'winds' 
Not too asseverative tame their throats 
To moods in mystical complacency 
Of contemplation whilst my limbs repose 
Beneath their harmony and bask with them: 
The melody of prelude ! And my heart 
Outreaches, takes (upon the stimulus 
Of symphony within me and without 
Releasing from long, nerve-rack'd harassment) 
Inceptions novel, tuned unto the taste 
/Esthetic of the momentary lapse 
From tension and from irritance, I turn 
No petulance now upon the pageant-thoughts 
Which dream-like muster in the lamplit air; 
Relaxing, I, to suave despondency 
Well-suited unto genius at research; 
The genius at research till haply wine 
With music lull to luxury of sleep 
Sans that bourgeois banality of bed 
And boorish night-cap. And in open'd book 
159 



POEMS OF PERSONALITY 

Which suits so well by sugar'd sonneting 

The melody of prelude, let me prick 

For phrase that fits, some text unto the tune 

Of thought : good reading matching the good wine. 

'Music to hear, why hear I music sadly', 
When all the yearning of the will of the world 
(The human burden-note, the nature-chord 
Supportant summing-up the cosmos-scheme), 
With scarce world's anguish'd unreality 
Of intellect-presentment, sweetly speaks — 
Ay, sweetly speaks, despite objective taint 
Still archetypal of our misery — 
In music wholly and therein alone? 
Why sadly, when the will, as Will, were nought 
Hedonic? Were it that the intellect, 
Whereof perchance no auditor were purged 
(Oho! am I of intellect now purged. 
Who spur at truth-lists but in music's name?) 
Nor musical creator quite exempt 
In exposition to art's inwardness. 
Through some machinery of sense impinged 
In music as in aught else, outwardly 
Interprets and infuses with a tint 

i6o 



SCHOPENHAUER 

Of customary melancholy, taken 
From visual imaginations, e'en 
These tonal harmonies? Were it that we 
(Whose speech is alway wondrously betwixt 
Vision and voice, interpreting all insight !) 
In no sort may escape idealism 
Specific, individual in fine, 
Howe'er disguised as though beyond the self. 
Of the self-illusion? Though yon music make 
(Expressive overtly of nothing known) 
Appeal in uttermost not unto mind 
But unto will's impersonality. 
Warranted as by genus general. 
Architectonic o'er Platonic types, 
Of pure conatus in unconsciousness, , 
Must self with sensitivity intrude 
(Sense, the sheer stuff, the raw material 
Of ideality, as Locke hath shown) 
To spoil all and announce with all life else 
The world-delusion and delinquency? 
Delinquent are we that the oracle 
Of will-reality (cause veritable 
E'en of curst consciousness) must yet, unreal 
(For so in last resort unreal is all 
i6i 



POEMS OF PERSONALITY 

Law-semblant definition 'neath the shroud 
Of space-and-time-form falsely causative — 
How quaint my Kant combined with Gautama, 
And yet profound beyond post- Kantian creeds 
Of shallow solipsistic optimism !), 
This pseudo-oracle of truth must yet 
Within our fantasy denominate 
Only the old illusion! How may we men 
Hear music to approve us feelingly. 
In the last freedom-effort of the heart. 
Of universal failure, lo! nor weep: 
Shamed of the sad insistence of the self; 
Alarm'd at life's incapability 
From life's illusions of a last escape? 
Alas! allowing to efficient will 
Some hope of nescience though the knower live. 
Through art (the form Platonic brought to earth 
Unwill'd save of the universal, felt 
As truth) in music have I dream'd escape 
(Music, the meaning of Pythagoras 
When measure, number was declared the key!). 
Hailing the hint of inarticulance 
(Involved in mere numericality . 
And lack of literal allusiveness) 
162 



SCHOPENHAUER 

For will-reality, of poignancy 
Provided by conceptual emptiness 
In concentration on the immediate mood 
For unillusion, non-idealism — 
Mistaken in a fond interpreting; 
And feel now fervently mine hope betray'd. 
And nothing save illusion, no escape 
(Unless, as now, my nisus were appeased — 
Ah! surely scarce in dreadful suicide! — 
Ever in truth-perception geniuswise?). 
No escape granted to the sensuous man 
Wholly from unreality, allow'd 
Anywise from the world-embodiment. 
For even an hint, be it hint of what you please 
Beyond the mind (even Fichte, fool enough, 
Had sight of that!), implies yet consciousness; 
And form of space-perception dominates 
(Ha ! Kant would have spared from space his moralism. 
But could not, as my doctrine plainly proves!) 
Still in the very "goal" of an "escape". 
And I am sad while music mocks at me, 
Who face the universal failure with 
Discomfort of mistake and fair disproof! 
As I treat all men else, so now in turn 

163 



POEMS OF PERSONALITY 

Music makes sport of genius in my frame. 
Pronouncing error where was boastfulness. — 
Fain from disproof would genius be debarr'd! 
Fain would be proven genius in the adoption 
Of the very truth found so discomforting! 
Say, the new step be taken, from mistake 
Freed by the very burden of disproof. 
The spirit of genius saved bewilderment! 
Say, all is veil'd, one woof of misery. 
One warp of mystery and no escape 
(Nay, not in utmost generality 
Hyperplatonic of the objectivism) 
From intellect's insistence of idea; 
But most-abstraction lies but most remote 
(As Plato's truths were still beyond the world) 
From world-salvation merely and from truth. 
Not from our falsehood and unhappiness ! 
Say, every loophole fancied of this life 
(Even the Oriental necromancy 
Of self-abstrusion, but approximately. 
Not fully liberative from the thrall) 
Stands stopp'd; and nought of any worldlessness. 
Abstractly counter to the pure idea. 
Pertaining to the will may be allow'd; 
164 



SCHOPENHAUER 

And very will-reality but names 

A central core, an accursed fundament 

(No thing-itself beyond our hedonism. 

But equally with ideality 

Topic of our despair as of delight) 

From which might be no dream of mere escape 

(Save genius be beyond bewilderment 

Delighting in the new-won estimate 

Of will-presentment, yea, of heart-idea?) 

For Maia and our self-bewildering! 

Then might I hear music less moodily 

Which yields at least such fundamental truth 

(For fundamental truth someway it seems 

Though more, perchance, akin to Locke than 

Kant — 
Far be it from the Fichtean foolery. 
From Schelling's charlatanry, Hegel's hoax!) 
In proof of irretrievable dismay: 
By being truth, ay, despite the truth's dismay. 
None less a law whereof I were behoved 
(Where'er it lead and wheresoe'er derived 
If not from these Teutonic solipsists!) 
Best to be proud in the possession, not 
Cast down, below mere mundane melancholy, 
165 



POEMS OF PERSONALITY 

With feelingful oppression. For if world. 
As proved now by this music-maundering, 
Even in hyperplatonism (extreme 
Resort of objectivity) defy 
Our artist-effort from self-tanglement 
To free the world-will, even so must be 
Some principle of understanding, power 
Call'd forth in genius by the new demand 
Of comprehension in me that entails 
New explanation. Grant that music means 
Through utmost generality of art 
(Itself the hyper-art from mind remotest) 
In some sort most approximately will 
Clean of specific demarkation, world-will 
Without will-world's idealism, and thus 
(Spare me the Fichtean ego-inference!) 
Yields hint of plausible freedom from a thrall 
Of self-mistake, yet worst of all mistakes 
Would be to blind heart to the strength of sense 
So well descried of Locke and Kant alike. 
Which even in instance of a beauty blind. 
An art of tone sweetly unvisual. 
Envelopes if by symphony of sound 
With veil of miserable mystery. 
166 



SCHOPENHAUER 

And from mistake, searching the secret things 
For mastery, may genius be debarr'd ! 

Music to hear, so may I hear half-gladly 
Roused for the nonce from suave despondency 
As erstwhile from the accustom'd petulancies; 
And fearing only some misinference 
Too far toward Fichte in the strain'd revolt 
So sudden from the accustom'd Hinduism 
Of world-illusion and will-nescience! 
Music to hear, so may I hear half-gladly. 
By conscience of the hint contain'd of truth 
Unusual, revolutionizing to 
My doctrine, stimulating to the brain 
Of one half-stagnate with entirety 
(As none before me with entirety 
Save Leibniz, stagnant in a dogmatism; 
Or Berkeley, haply, whom the saving salt 
Of sane subjectivism could not cure 
Of Judaism's stale theology — 
Ay, or Spinoza, at the best half-Jew!), 
The brain lethargic with entirety 
Of hitherto conviction. From thought's first 
Inception of my system sprung full-arm'd 
167 



POEMS OF PERSONALITY 

From my young front (and few, I ween, so young 
Show'd thus mature!) hath small development. 
Save if by confirmation — and, o' troth. 
Hath all comparison with creeds extant 
Of Hindu, Greek or Modern but confirm'd 
My creed's superiority, till now 
My genius grasps a growth within itself 
Quite independent, as I stoutly swear, 
Unfecundate of chance resemblances 
To Fichte's superficiality 
My riper penetrations so abhor — 
From truth's first birth hath small development 
Save evidential testimony ensued 
To titillate intellection or require 
Of genius exercise. 'T was daily but 
The cataloguing of more instances 
(As Aristotle wasted stupidly 
Acumen too discursive citing facts 
As instances of species yet unproved. 
For all his logic categorical !) 
In proof of fundamental postulates 
Seemingly unassailable: the Will, 
The World-Presentment and the Pure Idea: 
A balance of the Two and Tertium Quid 
168 



SCHOPENHAUER 

Someway arising in the brain (conceived, 
Though feature of idea derivative 
And so in need of warrant with the rest. 
Yet mystically warranting the world 
By secret union of idea and will — 
My circulus in demonstrando — brain !) ; 
And within World-Presentment (properly 
Enough if, as it seems, Presentment be 
Perchance all of my system that survives 
Proof of sense-universal) elements 
Of subject-self, of object-otherhood. 
The true-face (saving that the private self 
Were presence!) and the false-face of a truth 
Intrinsically false in virtue of 
The double-faced subtension. Such it was: 
My world-solution; and therefrom derived 
The mystic purpose to annihilate 
Unto a world-salvation self and brain, 
The inward and the outward privacy 
Of individuation. But — at a gleam — 
This music, and this moodiness aware 
Of doubt and new denominations to 
The well-worn platitudes. And 1 have proved 
Myself, maybe (as erst all thinkers else 
169 



POEMS OF PERSONALITY 

By my critique!), in error; and take delight 

Strange in the sudden mockery of me 

(Might I endure it on another's tongue?) 

Which music hath induced. For, of a flash, 

I penetrate 'Arcanas all unguess'd' 

Derisively, anent the vaunted theme 

Of flawlessness to my philosophy 

Establishing counter-systems in a word: 

I pleased thereby both for the cynicism 

Of mine own goals-destroy'd and claims-decried 

And for the feel of power in the insight 

Of truth-perception fondly fresh-allow'd 

(Despite this warning to my dogmatism!) 

For fundament incontrovertible. 

'T is slight, the change of sight, and yet how vast 

The implication! Let me laugh (as might laugh 

Kant at those earlier dogmatisms destroy'd!) 

At recollection of the creed foregone 

A moment since! Where now were vague Idea 

(That echo of the falser Platonism 

Beyond the genus-truth) or, echoing Buddh 

With some extravagance, the vaguer Will? 

The concept of sheer consciousness, o' sooth, 

Supposed objective and sheer nescience 

170 



SCHOPENHAUER 

Supposed subjective (this the very Real, 
That the Ideal) conscience as of nought 
And nothingness unconscienced given to match 
Each void the other's vague inanity? 
With music for the password to prove both? 
Where now the music antinomial: 
Pure objectivity of nothing known, 
Pure nisus of a non-sense join'd within 
Tone-harmonies alone (for visual 
Imaginings, even of art, were still 
Recognized terms of ideality 
'Soe'er generic) tones excepted from 
Otherwise universal rule of self 
(Ah ! how now shirk the Fichte-Schelling Self?) 
The hybrid and her world sensational 
Of mystery in mixture? Suddenly, 
The assertion of the modicum of sense 
(The sensuous fundament, heard or unheard) 
In tone-creation, of the parallel 
'Twixt voice and vision, and the paradox 
Melts into marvel that it e'er had seem'd 
Solution serious! Not one loophole left 
For any inkling of a meaning, in 
Experience the sole criterion, to 
171 



POEMS OF PERSONALITY 

Or selfless Will or objectless Idea; 
To Will pure Real, nor illusionism! 
But, in default of any severance, 
A somewhat which all theories would mean 
Which aim at unity and system, somewhat 
Perchance which others (might they be those three 
In chief I scoff 'd at?) guess'd more close than I; 
Somewhat associant, identical 

With selfhood as with worldhood through and through 
For the true Real, where nought is beside 
For basis of deception, ay, for veil 
Of Maia I fondly featured: somewhat shown. 
No doubt, in some degree by all who seek 
Fair understanding as their genius leads: 
An union elemental through one system 
(Temporal-spatial, ay, essentially) 
Of subject-objecthood, of me and world 
Within my personal; with personal will 
For nexus of the worldhood-intellect; 
With personal intelligence providing 
(Not in an hyper-kind or genus-sort 
Conceptualwise, but primely by perception 
Interpreting unto self-purposes 
The other-selves provisional of sense) 

172 



SCHOPENHAUER 

The terms of selfhood's real assertiveness; 
And Person, compounded of idea and will 
Uniquely, for denominance of all. 
And, where in music thus the person takes 
(Scarce mythic Number of Pythagoras; 
Which were but time without time-consciousness !) 
Tone-interrelation felt discriminately 
Whilst cognized as of self hedonicwise 
By intimate mergence of these elements 
Of system recognized identical 
With world-self at expression (ay, reconstructed 
E'en in the auditor who, too, creates — 
If most by imitation), there finds the spirit 
True satisfaction, scarce as by escape 
From worldhood, not by nescience of the will 
Obliterate from ideality. 
But by world-realization outwardwise 
As inwardly opening intelligence 
To comprehension of the unioning, 
To nexus in extremes, to terminism 
In blind conatus; leaving nowise blind. 
Nowise mysterious nor illusional 
Nor veil'd of Maia, this our beauty-life 
Of reconciliation, opposites 
173 



POEMS OF PERSONALITY 

Inextricably, throughly polarized 

And constituting wholeness mutual. 

How vast the implication from this seed 

Of sense, this hint of solidarities 

(I care not though the ear hear silently. 

As now in momentary pause of sound; 

For inward speech itself is sensuous-based) 

Abiding even in music — sense itself 

But worldhood least-avowed as of the person 

(Most strict externalized in other-selves 

Themselves scarce held in self's heart-sympathy). 

Most unlike inwardness yet none the less 

In rudiment systematic: the last straw 

My drowning disrupt snatch'd at and was saved! 

So from mistake hath genius been debarr'd. 

Grateful for disproof by the music-mood. 

Music to hear, thus hear I music gladly 
(E'en from the mythus of my Shakespear freed!); 
And from the gladness by irradial gleams 
Discover in all experiences else 
The tinge of satisfaction hitherto 
Quite undetected: that my pessimism 
Seems a lost shadow, and itself alone 
174 



SCHOPENHAUER 

Unreal, illusion'd. For where all is real 
Which to the personal will hath meaning, what 
Remains of old illusion yielding gloom 
For dint of unreality? Where life 
Is universal-mutual, what want 
Of pure Idea, to clear, as I conceived. 
The privy-wrought confusion ; or what need 
For necromantic abnegation of 
A world proved truth organic? World and I 
Alike are mutual-necessary, each 
Essential, real with reality 
Identical in the inter-reference. 
Sufficing to criterion of an whole; 
And so are warrantable each by each. 
And thus a living music ! — Yet, ah ! how weary 
The ear, now, at such stress irrelevant 
Of yonder loud expulsion from the brass 
Of booming-breath'd vibration ! With what snarl. 
Irritant to attentive petulance 
Startled as out of prophecies in sleep. 
Attest the viols their complainingness! 
Ha! 't is a weary business, this of earth, 
Sans all Arcanas worth the dreaming of; 
A wear-and-tear without or let or cease 
175 



POEMS OF PERSONALITY, 

Of each on other; sight or sound aHke 
(Even speech-thought, of both made up in base) 
Only some friction of the jaded nerve! 
A-bas, the foolish jest of joust for truth 
When merely living is a strife enough! 
Nought without sheer sensation ! Oh, there crowds 
In on the ruffled spirit such a storm. 
Outraging genius in its inwardness, 
Of interruptions and irrelevancies! 
No heart-escape! No thwarting such a will 
Inveigled in its cage inextricably 
To crowd and jar, to push and be rebuff'd 
The livelong eons of vulgarity 
(Humanity and nature bourgeois both; 
Whether supportant or at odds, what care?) 
Call'd cosmos! Ah! would but the courage stick. 
How swift I 'd cheat things of their sport of me, 
Checking their mockery with proud report 
Of how I dared the nobler self-escape, 
Destroy'd out of the world my saviorhood 
Of wisdom scarce-appreciated: so 
Abandoning their world-will to its fate! 
Ah, well ! I dare not. T is a question closed 
And seal'd with doctrine how the true escape, 
176 



SCHOPENHAUER 

Easy enough by contrast, were not death 

But life's continuance in some will-less mood 

(Possible to the ascetic saint, no doubt) 

Of vacant contemplation ! — Well, for me 

Here was a will-wan mood aesthetical 

(Born of a chance phrase in a much-thumb'd book 

Which now I snap-to, pocket testily) 

With contemplation but not vacantness; 

With fantasy of Fichtean folly — faugh ! 

Yon breath in the brass, yon poignance of the strings 

May seek and find escape, forsooth. But I, 

My sad limbs stiff with these unyielding stools, 

Surfeited now with music can but pay 

Their stupid reckoning. — How much for bad wine? 

Bah! 't is too dear! — And so am off to bed. 



177 



LINCOLN 

The people shall be trusted. Strong, though sad, 
In confidence 1 must announce the truth: 
Defeat, disruption of the nation now, 
The disappearance from the face of earth 
Of high democracy and government 
By the people for the people evermore. 
Now and forever — save the people come 
Equally from all sorts in sacrifice 
Of national service to the service-line, 
With common blood unto the bloody front. 
And face in absolute democracy 
The time's necessity. For hitherto 
Have but the bravest and the best stepp'd forth 
To strip for freedom's ringside, leaving all 
Of home and comfort and of life-career 
Because a patriotism upsprung within, 
A public duty felt and speaking in them 
Prevail'd above all selfish obstacle 
And drove them by compulsion of the soul. 
By conscience to the terrible battle-front. 
And this, despite democracy supposed. 
Was worse than aristocracy; the best 
178 



LINCOLN 

But flung in the breach. And of the best there be not 

Enough to stem the tides of slavery; 

Nor Union to posterity bequeath. 

Yea, can democracy and Hberty never 

Turn to the world the trick of victory 

Won and the right establish'd, save the crowd 

(At heart too proud to cower beneath the shield 

Of nobler natures) find in the fight at last 

Their manhood and salvation, nobly dying 

Where need is to make life nobler to live. 

The people, if to learn to find their life. 

Must be compell'd and at the dire need 

Trusted to take equality of pain. 

Equality of pain! Is that then all? 
Or truly first when sacrifice is shared 
Springs brotherhood? Shall I, the solitary. 
So sorely friendless at the nation's head. 
So nigh-unaided in its counsellings. 
By Providence compell'd to every task 
Of leadership alone (and so companion'd. 
At worst, of Providence!), in taking on me 
The terrible responsibilities 
Now of the draft-conscription to make men 

179 



POEMS OF PERSONALITY 

Follow by sheer compulsion, not myself 
At last, and for the first in verity. 
Feel kinships and the strength of sympathies 
With every man within the nation's bound 
Who serves and learns to love beyond aught else 
His country, that profound community 
Of purpose to set freedom everywhere 
Above compulsion in the hearts of men? 
Strange, bitter-sad the purgative of God, 
That they and I can only thus be free 
And free of a common aim in sacrifice 
By such compulsion: 1, compelling me 
To take upon my heart the infinite burden 
Prescribed to the conscience as by Providence 
Of forcing to the shambles brother-men; 
But, thereby only, winning victory 
And, thereby only, feeling brotherhood 
Complete and innocence of tyranny 
In the friendship of the faith that trusteth men 
To learn the deep disaster to our faith. 
To share with me the secret that there be not 
Of best enough to save the earth for good. — 
O Lord, couldst Thou, with malice unto none 
And charity toward all, singly prevail 
1 80 



LINCOLN 

By Thy high sacrifice; yet of mankind 

No heart and soul prevail, 'soe'er high-placed 

In men's preferment to the post of toil 

And power that is responsibility, 

No single will assume vicarious 

The sacrifice, unless in leading now 

All wills alike to yield with him their life 

(For high resolve how none in vain shall die 

Of them who, of the best, have fought and bled) 

In immolation to the common weal? 

Yet who of men did ever learn of Thee 

Except through sacrifice? And this I bear. 

This burden of compulsion over men, 

The nearest is and dearest at the heart, 

Most like religion to democracy. 

Most like a crucifixion in my spirit 

Of freedom, that it wholly rise again. — 

I trust the people. Though my trust compel. 



i8i 



WAGNER 

To them there is nothing plain till noon hath waned 
On the deed: they could not learn though I might 

teach them; 
For wonted things alone they can conceive. 
Whereas my spirit broods in the womb of dawn 
On things not yet brought forth. Some sword they 

need 
Of hero whom their gods have never help'd 
(The shatter'd sword which wants a forging-heat), 
A heart not bound in everlasting law, 
But fashioner of rule beyond their gods' 
Walhalla fall'n in ruin! For he alone, 
Heart-plunged in furnace of the welding world 
By stroke on stroke fresh-forged unto the times 
Were fit for deed which no god-kind can do. 
Remote, estranged from the onward strength of men: 
Deed which, but for the sake of gods or men, 
Some Siegmund must befather! But they are nought 
(Save only Liszt and Ludwig and a few!), 
Inept to understand though all my mind 
And heart and power of soul were flung before them 
In music-pearls 'neath hoofs of the Hagen-herd! 

182 



WAGNER 

The Hagen-herd who, hating, yet support 

The gods of old by hating more the hero; 

And, murdering him, had balk'd both men and gods! 

Ah! Wotan! Wotan! thou at worst spak'st truth, 

Though wrath inflamed thee with desire to break 

Laws of thine own devising; though thy god-spouse. 

Mere Fricka, frantic with the wrongs which Earth 

Had wrought her by concubinage with thee 

Change-fertile, Fricka, conservatrix still 

Of canon, flaunted in thy face the rule 

Of god-whim everlasting! But the lust-taunt 

Inspired thee, pluck'd indeed from thy dull'd eye 

(Clouded by that for which its mate thou pledgedst!) 

The wisdom of the ages and allow'd 

Insight prophetic of futurity! 

For thou, O Wotan, with the swine who, for 
The hate that is in them to the hero, laud thee 
(These sycophants of canons classical) 
Art pass'd: mightily pass'd and grandly so. 
My soul avows; but, pass'd beyond all help 
Save music of our humankind to-come 
More than re-youth thee! May the true gods of song 
Not fail in twilight sith tomorrow's dawn 

183 



POEMS OF PERSONALITY 

Hath gleam'd to a dayburst in the speech of me: 
Song aye and song, though every critic flout 
The flame-rush of me; though my every word 
Deny, destroy the modes their morbid sense 
Craves to its slumberous soothing! — Rouse and wake. 
Thou fire-maid of my wish; that, greatly daring. 
My heart, the unfamiHar of a fear. 
Espouse thee and upon the morning-heights 
Mouth to thy glory and splendor music free 
And formulable but to the fashioning 
Of the fearless bride-pair, me and thee, high maid! 
And if, at end, over mine ashes roll 
The green and deep tumultuous-pulsing Rhine 
Of foam-new melodies, of harmonies 
Snow-born of the mountains of a thousand dawns 
And rhythmic passionings beyond the ken 
Of aught now swirling in me; need the bright sun 
Of this awakening heart to heart with thee, 
Briinnhilde, mourn thy love for wasted, lost: 
That thou with me — my funeral pyre of hope! — 
Perishest and thine ashes with mine own 
Sweep to an ocean of antiquity 
Where both were nigh forgotten? Shall the wind 
Of world-arousing in our challenge-horn 

184 



WAGNER 

Echo in vain along the streaming crags 
For that this magic cirque which binds us twain 
Sinks to the glimmering depths; and bodeth silence? 
Silence? Nay, love! I never swerved from thee 
Nor thee insulted for the draught bedrugg'd 
Of lips'-applause, success ephemeral, 
Fetching thee from thy fastness down to them: 
Despite the sorry saga. And not then 
When death hath stopp'd my tongue (and posthumous 
The tone-child waxeth) not then at the last 
Need silence (still-birth of clangor troth-betraying, 
Harsh-hearted) seal our lips of concord-faith: 
Concord of union though the world misjudge 
With allegation of horn-dissonance! 
For, to the ages though my tongue be stopp'd, 
Shall this our ring from out the glimmering Rhine 
Greenly and gloriously emit the light 
Of gold, pure gold: that all Rhine-seas of song. 
Melodious-molten in the weltering wave, 
Yield back unto the sun at evening as 
At morning (ay, as now) a power of faith 
Enarm'd — as now with shield and helm of proof 
Aloft upon our wonder-rock sing we: 
Sing we, aloft upon our morning-peak 

185 



POEMS OF PERSONALITY 

Which giveth back the sun unseen below. 

Laws everlasting to the realm of song 

Tumultuous, mountainous of passioning, 

New and eternal new-eternally; 

Godship beyond inheritance o' the gods! — 

But they, though I might teach them, could not learn! 

But, ah! dear maid! this Siegfried of thy faith 
(Sudden, by pause of jubilation in me 
For empty hearkening world's echoless void; 
Myself estranged from the onward strength of men 
And, all too soon, myself the god-apart : 
Still as to-day no recognition sponsors 
In critic-mind the mystic challenge-round!) — 
Dear maid ! alas, this Siegfried of thy faith 
(Disown'd of the lives who bore too lonelily 
The man-birth by their death in parentage!) 
I feel, o' sooth, within the rolling Rhine 
Of ages got of this, in ashes strewn 
Abroad upon oblivion, the ring: 
For all its unalloy, yet time-debased. 
Revenged of time for that I outraged eld 
Who stole the hoard by slaughter, scarce for grace 
Derived of gods by whom I seem'd cast off 

i86 



WAGNER 

Acceptive of the moulded yielden gift ! — 
The ring, made mine of force unhallow'dly 
(Scarce felt for an inheritance from them 
Whose godship came anew to godship in me) 
Forever hidden in the hollow'd grot 
Of some subaqueous enchantment, lost: 
Maugre all purity of vaunted wonder 
And flawlessness from gods' obliquity! — 
Lost out of life as out of life was lost 
Each dwarf or monster of the brood of earth 
Who erst had owed it and whom my sword displaced 
By brutal dispossession! For no father 
Nurtured me; and my foster-nurses e'en, 
'Soe'er admired o' the callow forest-youth. 
My muse hath curtly slain. And thy loved self. 
Too privily debarr'd inheritance 
Of thy warfather's world-publicity 
And power effective (thou, my secret heir 
To Walhall's domination, yet by me 
Unowned for god-inheritress!), thy voice, 
Thy desolated voice denied of men ! 
Alas, for the hero, mightiest music-mind 
And mate of inspiration though he be! 
Alas! for him who (though the philtre-cup 

187 



POEMS OF PERSONALITY 

Of fate excuse him !) thwarts the marriage-plan 

EstabHsh'd of an art's propriety, 

Of social usage and precedence given; 

Who, deputy but of authority 

To bear the mystic bride unto her king ' 

His master, yet, intoxicate with draught 

Of private joy in self-despairing strength 

Autonomous, enamoureth thereby! 

How Tristan-like he lieth, lingering long 

In agony of wanting, with the wound 

Of inexpressible artist-anguish tortured, 

The wound of the world whose wisdom he has wrong'd: 

The wound his mad hand opens mortally! 

Whilst thou but in his yearning (of the sense 

Scarce-recognised), uncuring of the smart 

Mayest soothe at best, for all thy hastening hither, 

Only in bitterest anticipation 

Of parting, the frenzied pulse-beat with thy voice; 

And in thy coming doomest Kurwenal, 

Dragg'st down King Mark with weight of friendship 

fell'd: 
The Liszt, the Ludwig harm'd by faith in me! 
Thou hastest, doubtless, from earth's farthest confines 
To be with him at the last, attest thy faith 

188 



WAGNER 

And hearten him unto death's proof-avow'd 
Of uttermost failure! O'er the genius-corpse 
Thy life, too late arrived in the battled bark, 
Thine own life, how it mourns him, with what sound 
Most heaven-searchingly thy high swan-song 
Announces from thy soul-abandonment 
Still greatly true, faith-dignified in death. 
The world-release heart-tragic absolutely 
In ultimate annihilation ended 
Of every dream'd-on life-accomplishment. 
And where thou, pure Isolde, meltest down. 
An obsolescence and antiquity. 
Athwart the corpse of thy creative love; 
There he, the hero, doubly lies forgot 
(Lost out of thee as thou from the world art lost !) ; 
And all .is as though love had never been ; 
As though the spirit of music had not waked. 
Not even to the lust that wrong'd the world. 
The flux that flouted formulae foregone 
And taunted sane convention ! And now I come 
(The private passion, the secret love forsworn) 
To music-reconstruction, the master-singing 
(By dawn upon their wonted things of noon; 
Not night-annihilative but, resurgent !) 

189 



POEMS OF PERSONALITY 

Of critical tradition re-enthused 

With intimate artistry impassionate! 

And in the reconstruction shall I teach them 

(Not as by pearls to swine but, in communion 

With what of godship ever was to them, 

As through this friendship of a Liszt, a Ludwig!) 

By speech still sane: that they shall understand! 

Yet, soft! This master-singing! Let it echo 
Never so nobly with the social strength 
Of artist-organizing, yet what depth 
Of paradox, of difficult dismay 
Unto the private spirit which creates 
Such enterprise entaileth! How enthuse 
With intimate artistry impassionate 
Their music of the academic law? 
The very anti-art of formalism 
Revive in mine own person (though forsworn 
Be music-revolution!) unto proof 
Of radiant beauty undeniable? 
Though I abjure the fight, may I adopt 
(As now attempted in my comedy 
So close to score-completion) wantonwise 
The school-traditional authority 
190 



WAGNER 

As prentice still; yet turn my poetizing 
(Avoidantly serene, untragical 
Of purport as of world's reception too!) 
Beyond all praise or test, to breathing form 
Perfectly self-demonstrative by note 
On note of meaningful proportion, chosen 
Tune-spontaneity and reasoning 
Wonder: the song of songs and melody 
Of sheer melodiousness? How play the god-part 
Of personless creation, contentful 
Yet whole, emotion'd yet of filial calm, 
Proud but in piety, though heroical; 
Presentative of men and women aye 
Responsible, humanely as though godlike 
And yet exempt from magic fate-commands. 
Self-prized yet prize-compelling: when the man 
Must crown the archaism he dethrones, 
If aught 's to be achieved of fruitfulness 
In beauty seeded through the minds of men: "' 
Men's necessary minds, still stupidly 
(Save only Liszt and Ludwig of my heartstrings !) 
Demanding demonstration of the art 
In truth-terms academic, whilst decrying 
Art's demonstration of truth-novelty? 
191 



POEMS OF PERSONALITY 

For so the gods must prove allwise the world 
And Walhall-everlasting be the times' 
Onrush; and art, of art conservative. 
For all its alteration: conserving but 
As by renunciation of the best 
And disavowal of the limit-goal 
Of fancy-freed achievement, gaining all! — 
Thus, thus alone, by truth-relinquishment 
As truth were privily ideal, reaches 
(With calm of heart and vision of such end 
To hopes of self-achievement) the sick soul 
A peace beyond all peradventure, peace 
(Curing the wound of wanting and world-sin) 
Of Holy Grail descended from above 
On him who, thus renouncing not alone 
The storm and stress but therewith overtly 
All bourn of person'd impress on the times 
(Unlike that Siegfried who apostatized 
His singleness of mission, yet was slain! 
Ay, Lohengrin-like; though, deeplier, Parsifal: 
Scarce by withdrawal but, by entering in!). 
Accepts the song-succession, the soft li^ht 
Of loftier than Walhall streaming down 
Out of the dome of harmonies vouchsafed 
192 



WAGNER 

In solemn onward rhythmic tongue of bell. 
The gods of song have help'd indeed the hero 
Who, by self-abnegation of all aim 
(Mayhap my Liszt, my Ludwig feel this in me 
Maugre my seeming-egotist despairs?) 
Save reverent consecution, takes the bowl 
Of blood beloved 'twixt the hands of him 
For consecration and for sacrifice. 
To bless, release and rectify the truth. 
Not in defiance, heart-tumultuously, 
Nor with the hope of life-eternal here 
Unless 'in Christ', successive in the whole 
Of endless presence through the temporal stream ; 
By past-to-come absolved, resolved through prayer; 
Healing not as by magic but release 
From untoward interruption: through the grasping' 
Of weapons hurl'd transforming them to balm ; 
Scarce by avoidance, ail-responsibly 
Savior by pity, sympathizing still 
With gods, progenitors wherefrom derived. 
And marvel-ways of obsolescence; so 
Successor-conservator militant 
By spirit-classicism; saint approved 
By generosity, yielding to art 

193 . 



POEMS OF PERSONALITY 

Because of reverence and self-despite 
A canon as by insight-innocence. 
By art-religion and law-mystery 
Now understood, unlock'd with heart-key to it: 
Not liable to love-death nor disown'd 
Of any seas of song horizon-broad 
Which bear within their wave the wonder-ring 
And need not waft a troth-betraying bride 
Too late to him who dieth of the law ! 
For such an one as he, this Parsifal, 
Now waxing in me with acceptance of 
The mission of succession beautiful 
In order from the earliest, such as he 
(Enlighten'd not by fairy speech of bird 
From forest-ignorance to hero-lore 
But, by the power of soul-significance 
Enfranchised through envisagement of sin!) 
Stands help'd of the gracious gods and founding them 
More surely in Walhalla mountain-rear'd 
By every humbler utterance. — Come we, then. 
Companions of my stress and storm, Isold', 
Briinnhilde, maids of mine imagining 
(Ah! Kundry, your fallen sister, can but die; 
Yet dies renew'd: old failures art-redeem'd!); 

194 



WAGNER 

And learn how scions are we of the gods, 
God-help'd and helping! Come ye, hand in hand! 
The morning is upon the lands of song 
Because the nights have been and ancient dawns 
Have touch'd ere now the snow-peaks with their beams ! 
With reverent look and downcast tread ye soft 
The porch of the temple: come, and enter in! 
Hark ye the bell and lay ye by the horn. 
Heed well the wealth of marvel o'er your heads; 
And, sinking here in prayer with me, at last 
Achieve, renouncing; teach, if teach ye will. 
By fellowship. Ah ! eating of the bread 
Of healing sympathy, learn we the world! 



195 



GLADSTONE 

How genuine. Lord! our immaturity! 
With what conviction is our life begun 
And final purpose; though the full career 
Proves no conviction final and our end 
Yearning but onward! If the life-span stretch'd 
E'en to millennia, not the scant three-score 
And seven of mine hour vouchsafed by Thee — 
E'en to millennia, yet maturity 
Were reach'd, if anywise within man's reach, ; 
Not as a wakening from a dream of youth 
To ripe realities then first achieved 
But, mainly as a gathering-up of years 
Past and of prior powers effectual 
To the force of the moment and the purpose of it. 
Sans prejudice to After or Before! 
Yea, Lord ! how otherwise the work began 
In earnest conservation; and thereon 
How earnest ('neath Thy guidance) the reform, 
The reconstruction root and branch with hope 
Of conservation only by the more 
Laying the axe to the root for England's weal! 
And yet how true the first sincerity, 
196 



GLADSTONE 

How genuine the early agencies 
Each at the need of the day; and now how strong 
The inward urgence, under guidance of Thee, 
Toward one stroke more (inglorious ease postponed) 
UnHke aught hitherto (save Italy, 
My propaganda for a freedom there. 
Yield hint of a beginning) and yet impell'd 
Both by sincerity of ethic need. 
The thrill of a duty to denounce the Turk 
In his unspeakable atrocity, 
The thrill of moral need which ever urged me, 
Quick'ning in me the mood of veriest youth; 
Whilst, wise by retrospect of divers causes 
Each in its turn mine oriflamme, no longer 
Expecting in the work finality 
Nor after-conservation (England lapsing 
Perchance to Ottoman policy anew. 
Though wiselier then than if not now aroused) 
But claiming only for the hourly need 
The fair, the fitting; and a work-of-youth 
Brave in its passing consequence, sincere 
In proud-admitted immaturity! 
Lord! at the outset of a championing 
(Well-nigh unaided in a grim old-age) 

197 



POEMS OF PERSONALITY 

Which leads no man knows whither, let me lead 
My mind in solitude within this church 
Of Hawarden, whithersoever in Thy wisdom 
The mind of man may wander reverently! 

For, lo! we leave behind us not a youth 
Inane nor self-deluded. For our youth 
(Whether conservative, ay, or radical — 
And, either way, there were good reason for it!) 
In all that makes for man-maturity 
(This surety that no wisdom were mature!) 
And worthiness unto the work of earth 
Lasts on, the only way may aught last on, 
In the consequence, resurgence of our power. 
By virtue of life's evolving moral need. 
Of self-conviction; if with ever more 
Contrast of past convictions so contain'd, ; 
Even by such cumulation thus but more 
With genuineness of the years-outlived 
And prospect of a real accomplishment 
In stimulation of a further purport 
Purposed, equipp'd and arsenal'd. — The singer 
Of Troy heroic, though to these our times 
A boy in glory of outburst, glories yet 
198 



GLADSTONE 

These problems of our boyhood's overplus 
(These councils of the chiefs, these kindling fires 
Of nation-wide uprising, as I trust — 
Spare Troy the poison'd parallel of Turk!): 
Sincerity (and with vision of the whole, 
A sense of ethic need ennobling man!) 
Streaming, illuminating, from the page 
I oft have pored-on, in a secular mood. 
For uplift in the turmoil and the labor 
With splendor of application to our times; 
Although but primitively hand-to-hand 
The contest, crude the counsel of the clans 
And wanting much in high morality 
Their elemental gods. Ah, God, Thy Book 
Of patriarchal, mild simplicities 
(Not lacking, too, in strenuous interlude!) 
Were loftier, sith inspired ! Yet for me now 
(Who want a youth, not three-score years and seven. 
Wherewith to kindle England!) in Thy Homer 
Upwells an inspiration verily 
Anent the moment ! For the youth of the world 
(That phrase, Juventus Mundi, still it thrills me!) 
Is his indeed. And of the youth of the world 
That which was loftiest, the incitement of it, 

199 



POEMS OF PERSONALITY 

Ambition for achievement in tlie best 

And boon of brave belief must bide in us. 

Respond and echo from the brave-born soul 

Of modern man, who (bearing burdens felt 

For world-wide in our policies, for fraught 

With spirit-problems sprung of the history 

Of thrice-millennium since Ajax' hour) 

Evolves, outlasts the earlier spirit-pose 

Ever to new conviction ! I am come 

(O God, the splendid pain of change at heart!) 

Through many an alteration of my judgment. 

Through many a refutation inmostly 

Of confident assurance. But remain 

Like Homer (like Ulysses of the bard 

Now long our laureate) unskeptic still. 

Believing in Thy truth and action through it — 

Though someway the conviction may not rest 

But by its very operation alters 

The disposition of environment 

Which gave to faith vocation ! Ah, may not faith 

(Under Thy prompting, Lord, if it may be) 

With incident operation, based therein 

And so expressive of the inmost man, 

Itself half-poet wise create for man 

200 



GLADSTONE 

Whether for others also or oneself 

(Ay, who would wait to find majorities 

Before conviction and a founding of them?) 

The fresh truth-disposition; and be faith 

Coincident with truth from hour to hour 

Alone by permanent power within the faith ' 

Through function to establish ever further 

The whelming consequence and yearn thereto? 

How have I, with this Homer in my veins, 

Strode on from aim to aim, from youth-belief 

To man-belief and man-belief anew. 

Yet ever couraged and convinced afresh 

Where critics well have carp'd upon the change 

Crying for craven act-consistency 

Where ever only wax'd consistency 

Of consequence and growth to lead men on 

Unto the making of a new fact-form 

Whence newer needs and new convictions spring 

More warrantable mainly than the old 

Because by will to truth contributive ! 

Ah, had I been the charlatan (perchance 

One such there were in England's councils now 

Predominant, imperative?), sincere 

In nought than shrewd time-serving, then had I 

201 



POEMS OF PERSONALITY 

Deserved the censure, where from moods without 

Of divers men and things alone the warrant 

Had for the alter'd action e'er accrued: 

No faith to gripe a growth-congruity 

In leading ever onward, in altering all 

Of truth-interpreted to fit the faith 

And thereupon in operation posing 

(Not by a passive self-subjection 'neath 

A nature's chance-selecting but, creative!) 

The disposition of environment 

To suit the new-born purpose as it may! 

How false, had I not youth and Homer in me! 

How sad, were faith not, in these things of earth. 

The court of last appeal; and poetry — 

The making-over of experience 

In vision of a virtue not (to sense 

Immediate and to chronicle) its own 

But spirit-inward — with efficiency 

The type of man's supreme prerogative 

Of founding to the image of his soul 

The future out of past accumulation! 

For, with mine Homer in me, youth of the world 

Upwelling though I grew but to the grave. 

Were growth not merely life's compelling rule 

202 



GLADSTONE 

(So Darwin in his simpler cynicism) 

Enforced in blindness on reluctant clay. 

But life's great glory of a poetry, 

A demigodship of the living soul, 

An high Olympianism of the man, 

A proud impulsion spiritual within. 

Whether 'mid Senates of the mightiest realms 

Or stilly in self-searching privacy 

As now with Thee, O Lord, in Hawarden church: 

From within outward to make all things new 

(By conservation of the older things 

Their leading gradual, self-development) 

And doubt not — more than need be for our 

sight 
Imperfect and our knowledge half-at-fault. 
Our reverence for the practice-tested past 
As standard of a truth time-reconciled; 
And basing confidence in the poet-soul. 
The youth which visions through maturity 
An immaturity, an innocence 
Of unfulfill'd adjustment if they will. 
Which needs not life-eternal to achieve. 
Nor immemorial monuments to prove 
A presence now by foresight to the years 
203 



POEMS OF PERSONALITY 

In work's effect though all our works are found 
Imperfect to tomorrow's artistry! 

O God, art Thou the One that doth not change; 
And yet Thy works (as immanent in man's. 
Evidenced in the puppets of Thy power) 
All, all at change, based in a fact of faith 
Alone which changeth not through every hour? 
O God, art Thou then Faith and only Faith, 
This warrant of earth-things which changeth not, 
But nought beside of earthly incidence? 
Or rather in every operation changing 
Sofar as Thou in these creation-acts 
Call'd man's art ultimately Poet-God: 
An O'er-Olympian ever amid men 
Concern'd and greatly fighting the good fight? 
Shall men pretend that any Godliness 
Abides our question (ay, or should abide — 
For, lo ! no coward skepticism here. 
No cheap agnosticism waiving creed !) 
Save as the search is answer'd hourly 
Just in the youth, the reverent conviction. 
The faith-at-application constantly, 
The continuity of heart sincere 
204 



GLADSTONE 

Which men may labor in and be at peace? 
Art Thou then Youth of the World; Who, opening out 
Thy self-unfolding never didst enfold 
Until the unfolding that which seems to hide 
Yet hid not; Thine all-immaturity 
Poetic at creation evermore 
Genuine in the making of Thyself? 
And as we go into the grave dost Thou 
As we have known Thee also truly die 
Though resurrection be Thy youth-of-the-hour? 
These very questions Thou art answering 
Not every hour alike, but differingly 
If alway truly to each differing faith: 
Mine own in this brief moment of communing 
Startling the depths that in my thought of Thee 
Had hitherto in seeming slept unchanged. 
And truly slept unchanged till, wakening now. 
Their very wakening stirreth, through the past, 
A power at work within them dimly there 
To mould a world-foundation, cast a faith 
Which even as a faith hath not remain'd 
A faith in faith-unchanging nor a youth 
Of aging unaware ! For deeds of youth 
Were trick'd with a purpose haply to endure 
205 



POEMS OF PERSONALITY 

(Though altering the hitherto-endured 
If but by such factitious conservation!) 
Unalter'd in intention whatsoe'er 
The change and chance which might ensue thereon. 
But now, with thanks to Thee that I have found 
An organon of faith pragmatical 
Enheartening in me my loneliness — 
Yea, now I recognize the righteousness 
Of unguess'd alterations; and desire 
Not that the impact of the hourly blow 
Shall echo to the ages my mere meaning. 
The hope for the Cause, for victory, that is mine 
When struggling for achievement presently; 
But all be fluid (even Thy Church-and-State 
As Turk or Balkan) with the fact of faith 
In the retrocession: fluid, save as this fulness , 
Of comprehension of a temporal scheme 
(Not for concealing truth but for revealing) ' 
Which understands and holds at every hour 
The apprehended vistas infinite; 
Themselves, as apprehended instantly, 
Not subject to retraction, to holding-on 
Nor ripe anticipation; and thus afi'ording 
The ultimate truth-standard though at each 
206 



GLADSTONE 

Infinite instant in a truth and faith 

Unique unto the hourly task at hand; 

Themselves (in proof of such uniqueness felt 

Of him who labors) rectifying earth 

As in him lies by power of such a youth — 

The vistas apprehended proving him 

An Homer, biding poetwise despite 

The crudity discover'd, the vainglory 

(Yet victory still were truth's prerequisite!) 

Of combat hand-to-hand for victory, 

The spoliation, or the wantonness 

Of godhood more contemptible than man 

Because more capable in cruelty! 

Ah ! may such Youth of the World be in my work. 

Lord, as Thine inspiration though I fail; 

Leading this England on, far to outstrip 

The uttermost reforms of this mine age: 

A world-poetic of a Poet-God 

Appreciating as it proves them false 

These old-age ethnic liberalities: 

As it turns and smiles at them; and feels their power! 



207 



BRAHMS 

O BLEST conservatism of human minds; 
O reverence for the mighty who have been 
And who by splendor of the truth have told 
A satisfaction everlastingly! 
O spirit of classicism in our souls 
And admiration of the proven path: ] 
Precluding all iconoclastic zeal 
Within me as I set me to my song! 
What peace, what pure support from by-gone powers 
Avow'd, beyond mine hour's prevision, pour'd 
Over and through this fever of the heart 
Which starts the tone-blood tingling innerly! 
What noblest vistas of achievements past 
Now poised above the onlook; and within . 
The very music-flood of wave and wave, 
Of throb and throb of this so passionate voice. 
What deep-reflective, channell'd imagery 
Ordering, regulating, holding wise. 
Articulate and rhythmic-logical 
The rhapsodies of elemental mood! 
No loss of voice direct; with, oh, what gain 
Of mastery in the tone-material, 

208 



BRAHMS 

In context of the screed and history 

Of art's own growth to prove the truth for new: 

By just this solemn sense of splendid Bach, 

Mozart of unimpeded purity, 

Beethoven glorious for a canon given, 

A method and a tried maturity! 

How other than the wildness of romance 
Which they of the half-insanity (untaught. 
As 't were, of all mistakes, all axioms too. 
Known to the humbler scholar) boldly laud; 
Whom instinct only guides and draweth on, 
. Whom hatred of the past alone impels 
And crude contempt for masterhoods achieved - 
Blind leading! Ah, how otherwise than theirs j 
This music that is in me: and yet mine own,] 
Mine verily; as theirs may never be 
Personal, wrought of fraught experience 
Of world and man from boyhood upward still 
(Witness our folk-song ever unforgot !) 
In wide-eyed understanding of the moods 
Of men, acceptance of the fact of fate , 
And sympathy with cosmic issuings ! 
Ah, so; for surely spiritual more 
209 



POEMS OF PERSONALITY 

Than instinct is the sage insistency ' 

Of serious appreciation basing 

The onward step of apprehending soul ! 

(Forgive, O Muse, the seeming boastfulness! 

'T is founded in an artist-piety 

And reverent self-subjection as I toil !) — 

The self-control, so, as the labor-pains 

Of fervent parturition wax and wreak 

Their will upon the works of destiny ! 

No mad, luxurious plaint at agonies 

(To chaos fusing all resistent lore 

Of logic-distance, cyclic hierarchy !) 

Too poignant nor within their poignancy 

Too sweet; but something spirit-solemnizing 

In large restraint (retaining inferences 

Multiform, order'd to the farthest spheres). 

In large restraint remembering well the wonder 

Of myriad births before in minds and hearts 

Of human melodists triumphantly. 

O blessed sequence in the story aye 

Of every fresh-creative immanence 

Inherent to it as a dignity 

Of self-containment, be they ne'er so new 

These figures of the present utterance ! 

210 



BRAHMS 

The deep sustainment of the searching-back 
(Though mind fore-reach an own eternity!) 
Unto the uppermost and inwardmost 
Endoming concave of the storehouse-brain. 
The overarching heaven of memories ! 
What self-protection in the presence here 
Imaginary of the master-six 
Who shadowy o'er my shoulder lean and write 
If with my pen yet well-nigh warningly 
The sequence-scripture as it ought to be! 
So Beethoven, so Bach and Handel might 
(Nay, Mozart, Haydn or Schumann, as you will!) 
Have juxtaposed such contrapuntal schemes. 
Such themes melodic and such rhythmus-plans 
With such-like harmonies. If that they did not 
(Yea, if they could not, would not strictly thus — 
A sense convinceth, these are mine alone 
Because sincerely of my cultured heart !), 
If that they did not, fairly may it seem 
'T were but men's limitation of life-span. 
Their absolute position there and then 
(Which I, in loving them, well-nigh re-learn!) 
Which could preclude our common faith and form. 
An they had dwelt in the chamber here to-day 

21 I 



POEMS OF PERSONALITY 

Their work had been mine own; or not unlike 

(Were they in youth and vigor) these my tones! 

And they in me are vocal: not myself 

All-unregardful, but, myself well-versed 

And learning-influenced, a self the more 

Motived by such compliance, more myself 

As they by me more musick'd — that a world 

Well-versed in Beethoven's, in Handel's song 

May understand and heartfully receive 

The utterance of the masters from mine hand, 

While generously acclaiming works of me ! 

What service thus to keep alive the light 

(Adding to truth though scarce displacing it) . 

Of former uttermost achievements, now 

(Where risk might be of practice-desuetude) 

Revivified because of utterance 

Fresh, new-impassion'd and with wisdoms of 

A later world of men's veracity. 

Lest technic (question trivial to the soul 

O' troth) seem stale or scarce sophisticate! 

What service and what privilege of mine 

(And classicism feeds humility!) 

To enter in and take traditional 

The virtue of the earlier music-truth, , 

212 



iBRAHMS 

The absolute function of the torchbearer , 

Who, for his strong half-century of toil, 

Paceth forever in processional 

Of music's institution! For my heart 

Is Bach, is Beethoven and Handel too. 

Haply if but thereby in verity 

O'er all mine own! And I, in uttering 

The great tradition unto acceptation . 

Of scholar-culture, am but vitalwise 

Original, an idiosyncrasy 

Of innermost romanticism instinct 

Because thus native to the truth-control! ' 

Hark, ye! who vainly after gods unknown 
Are wideliest erring from the strict ascent ! 
Hark deep; and search if so, by shutting soul 
From memory's sustainment and the power, 
In terms of absolute tone-experience. 
Sprung of the reverence of self-restraint 
Within the idiom of a music-mood. 
Ye have not emptied from the heaven's concave 
The content of your tone-philosophies; 
And, forcing music as a concept-speech 
To tasks best suited of a sister-art, 
213 



POEMS OF PERSONALITY 

Yet welter in your aether as a void: 

A music-void, whate'er your utterance 

Of program and of picture openly? 

Ye, lifting no torch; but (half-articulant 

In terms of absolute music-idiom yet) 

Cut-off as by a bedlam from the world. 

Disabled by the doctrine of your dream: 

All-vision, ay, but nought of firmament 

Unless, through inference of speech and scene, 

A firmament of earth too earthlily. 

And, if ye be unskilful to sustain 

Yourselves of the aether as an Icarus 

And fear that earth-fall from the music-void 

(The antique figure he of such romance 

Which makes a void where art-void none had been!), 

Spurn not what learning stirs, if yet half-womb'd, 

Plume-budding, I swear ye, from the spirit of each 

(In memories of a youth-hour, childhood-years: 

The happy school of folk-song unforgot) 

And reverence — these, for wings which fervors melt 

not; 
That loftily ye wreak, ere life be done. 
The music-destiny as in me now! 
Hark to the reminiscence, echoing 
214 



BRAHMS 

The structure of the master, him who built 
In centuries of contrapuntal toil 
An heritage, which, 'neath the winds of fate. 
Yea, as the gathering backward of the wave 
With lifted image of the hills and skies, 
Forward and forward ever bursts beyond! 



215 



NIETZSCHE 

If by their fruits (to quote the hated creed) 

Shall men be known, ah, by what bitter fruit 

Unto the weaker peoples of the earth 

Shall I, the neglected and despised to-day — 

Shall I, in saner hours the mild and kind — 

Shall I be known and my mad name accursed! 

Lx)! by what rumors of approaching wars 

Awful, o'erwhelming when the mightier hosts 

Of Teuton like to locusts o'er the earth 

(Our treaties torn and our most solemn oaths 

Forsworn — for what were 'faith toward heretics'?) 

Sweep down and on and over, leaving there 

But fields burnt black and homes in smouldering 

heaps: 
And everywhere the overhuman cult 
(In cross of iron rigor-emblemized) 
Crushing and crucifying; that the maim'd 
And halt and blind alone survive the stroke 
Of latest Hun and Vandal slaughtering them ! 
Ha! Where the far-famed temples of their creed? 
Tottering, yea, tower on tower; the fallen naves 
Bloody beneath with crush'd-out brains of men, 
216 



NIETZSCHE 

Of women and of children whom a dogma 

Senile and tottering drove in idol-hope 

To prayer; and whom mine hope-of-overman 

Hath stew'd and charnell'd on the altar-floor. — 

Great wrath of glorious Germans! once aroused. 

Mine ultimate aristocrats of earth 

(How I mistook ye in the earlier days!), 

To absolute ruthlessness: how shall the shrieks 

Of Belgian (shook from superstition's trance). 

Of Gaul (no Emperor to urge them now, 

Nor culture comparable to our own!), 

Of Gaul and Briton wild with streaming hair 

Howl to their helpless heaven's all-vacantness: 

Their heavens empty; and no power to save 

Equal at all to man's, to overman 

His power to dismay and doom the world! i 

Muscle and sinew, steel and my fierce hate 
Which fills the heavens of Frank and Angle, ay. 
Low-spirited curs of quack democracy. 
With soaring shells and shower of molten death, 
With flare and thunder and the nations' end! 
Not one shall live to tell the fearful tale 
Where tongues from the roots are torn; not one awake 

217 



POEMS OF PERSONALITY 

To flash the accusing eye, where eyes are ripp'd 
From socket; not one hand remain to write 
The desolate condemnation: for their hands 
Are flung in the reeking ditch and only stumps ', 
Of anguish'd arms implore where peace is none! 
So shall they wreak who take of me the truth; 
So shall they slay: because am I divine! 
If 'by our fruits': these are the fruits of me! 

What sayest thou, Christ? Have I not crown'd thee 

now 
With sharper than the thorns of ancientry? 
Yea, how I scorn the silly sacrifice. 
The brutish sufferance of the underman. 
The underdog in the world whereof wert thou 
The crucified arch-type: imposed at last 
On hated strangers; but from German hearts 
(As in arch-type mine own) now blotted out , 
In triumph of a fitness to survive 
Beyond all good and ill, all counter-rights i 
Of any than the chosen ego-few — 
Thy stupid pitifulness, Christ, crush'd down 
And trampled in the blooded, ashen mud 
Never to lift again out of the grave! 

218 



NIETZSCHE 

Ah ! well-nigh with the froth of some wild-beast 

At ravening rape upon the body of earth 

I rant; and curse, O Jew, the Cross and thee! — 

Nay, lift not, Jew! that darkening scowl at mine! 
Nay, strike not with that sudden, angry arm. 
Of recent centuries, unused and weak! 
Art thou, too, cured of love; and with wan hate 
A spectre stalking from the sepulchre 
By soaking wounds of men revived and hurl'd 
(Thou wast not always otherwise than I !) 
Worldward anew, a spirit of ruthlessness? 
Art thou, then, arm'd against me, to strike down 
(In irony I mock thine impotence!) 
The hand of my defence and hew it off 
The reeking stump which powerless hangs apart 
(In sport I picture it to frenzy thee) 
A dripping spectacle? And wouldst thou take 
My tongue and tear it? Wouldst thou pluck mine eyes 
Green from their nerve-roots? Nay, be merciful. 
Have pity, I implore thee mockingwise ! 
Yet someway I would see thee as thou hast been 
(Yea, mainly, and when of heresies unplagued) 
Not as in this delirium teasingly 

219 



POEMS OF PERSONALITY 

I take thee for an Anti-Christ! For thou 

Wast my great spoil and conquest, yielding me 

An universe wherethrough mine egohood 

(Thine, too, could persecute: ay, that I yield thee!) 

Savage and splendid might achieve her end. 

And if thou, too, enlarging on the old. 

Cruel hint that comes to competence in me; 

Yea, if thou, too, shouldst prove an over-hand, 

An over-sword to smite and torch to burn. 

Where, Lord, for thee or me alike would lie 

A world to spurn and desolate? I prithee, 

Down, down into the grave again and rot. 

Peaceful beneath the sod blood-saturate; 

And leave this world to super-savagery 

Set-off and gloried by thy crown of thorn ! 

I crave thee. Lord! — Nay, nay, I know the cant: 

How Gottlieb Fichte, rousing us to war. 

Yet dream'd unto our Christianity 

An human oversoul, self-unity 

The same in each and every man of earth 

(As though our sun-space were as cramp'd as thine) 

And held us back thereby from license (ha! 

No Gottlieb staid the conquest latterly — 

Strange, strange, I could have wished it less entire! - 

220 



NIETZSCHE 

Along our Rhine and after great Sedan !) ; 

Who held us back in altruism whilst then \ 

Our tribe gain'd freedom from the despot Gaul! 

I know how now my cult of superman 

In hearts too tender toward hypocrisy 

Allows to each and every man of earth 

The potency of private super-will 

And therefore fain were Christian in respect 

For every high ambition as mine own. 

To spare the weaker peoples from dismay: 

Thy cant of 'neighbor even as thyself! 

But I, O Jew, prefer and choose the test 

(Now that the Vision breaks the Reason down!). 

The truth, of independence; in my power 

Of absolute purpose with the right of might. 

The might beyond stale question ethical. 

To combat; yea, O Lord (though even thou. 

Forced by my fight to curse thy cant's-own creed. 

Rise up in arms and hew my body down — 

Indeed, indeed, thy strength grows wonder-keen!). 

To struggle and oppose and hate and hew 

The body of my neighbor, whilst mine own 

I fearlessly expose to the flaming sword — 

A mutual dependence of the strife 

221 



POEMS OF PERSONALITY 

In both alike if still the cant thou cravest: 
Believing in the combat, not in peace 
Save by oppression and the crushing down! — 
Thou wilt not back to the grave? Thou wilt not 

down? 
Come, then, strike hard, thou Christ ! and let me see, 
Whate'er the issue, my creed conquering: 
Not thine, by any possibility; 
A world unchristianized in meeting so 
Arbitrament of war, of stroke to stroke 
Determining survival — ah, no more 
World-love hypocrisies but, by thy force. 
My victory! Though the Fatherland should fall 
And I, the neglected and despised of eld, 
I, yea, be trampled 'neath thy cloven heel. 
Thy nature stands corrupted by mine own ! 
Thy nature stands ennobled by mine own! 
Ay, though I die, I leave thee in the deed 
An Anti-Christ, mine image: ruthlessly! — 

If 'by their fruits': this last and best is fruit; 
That Christ must meet me in the over-doom ! 
And so, how nobly mine and mine alone 
The militant high compulsion! Mine the name 

222 



NIETZSCHE 

Dread with the rumor of approaching wars 
Awful, o'er-whelming; mine the ruin-ash 
Choked up with charnell'd corpses and the arms 
Uprear'd in the dripping ditch where peace is none ! 
Mine, mine the glory: glorious, ruthlessly! 



223 



ROYCE 

The duty of a loyalty to truth 
Compels that truth be spoken, whatsoe'er 
The function of a civic violence 
(Our nation, ceasing parley with the foes 
Of man, thrice-arm'd against a pirate crew) 
Must utterance provoke! For violently 
Have falsehood and dishonor long laid hold 
With horrible outrage on the stricken land 
Which, calm and unofTending in the sun, 
Barr'd but the barbarous path of savagery 
From plotted spoliations: that, itself 
Made victim to the fangs of the foil'd beast, 
A Belgium bleeds. The appointed guardian turns 
To desolator; and the ravishment, 
All-unprevented though the half-world fight. 
Persists in still-increasing agony; 
Whilst we unmoved, unmoving stand apart 
And with a scared, sleek courtesy disclaim 
Occasion for a judgment: right or wrong, 
Scarce for a neutral wisdom to pronounce! 
O coward heart ! O curst disloyalty 
To our firm freedom of an upright past; 
224 



ROYCE 

Lost honor-ideal of democracy; 

Neglected faith of a people heretofore 

Fair to the weak, downtrodden, fearing nought 

Of overbearingness and tyrant-power! 

O hated policy, which ties the tongue 

And folds the hands with futile prayer for peace: 

When, of all human chronicle, the worst 

Outrage upon the holy spirit of man 

(Fiendly prepared and fiendly screen'd by lies) 

Now wantons, riots without let or check 

To-day, to-morrow at our ocean-door 

And all-precludes peace' possibility 

(For us, as for our fathers otherwhile) 

Unless within us be the conscience dead, 

The spirit sodden, rotted to the core! 

My friends, here gather'd together to attest 
Your detestation of the Teuton crime! — 
My friends, there is a progress of the spirit, 
A process wherein the soul achieves herself 
In virtue of a loved community 
With other-souls of mutual respect; 
An involution of the conscience-care 
(Not for the narrower aims of merely me!) 
225 



POEMS OF PERSONALITY 

Toward ever more and more the whole wide world 
Of human hopes, of human purposes 
Appreciated to fulfilment through 
The consummations of a social good 
Contributed in every deed and dream, 
Each thought and striving of the least of us. 
And we, the least of us, wax holiest 
Best by the world-inclusion, the concluding 
Of every evil in the cosmic course 
Consciously toward a bettering — not, by blinding 
The eyes of the heart, the ears and tongue tight- 
sealing 
Where uttermost appeal claims of the soul ! 
And we must choose the part of heedless sleep, 
Else of the high and strenuous works of love! 
Today, tomorrow is the call of love: 
Not as in sanctimonious lethargy 
Of waiting a millennium but, by dint 
Of love's best blow, to bear the brutal down. 
To fight the good fight where the fight hath join'd 
Before our feet with horrid spectacle 
Of nations ravish'd and the spoiler strong! 
The spoiler: heeds he the precluded hopes 
(Harmless and high in homely dignity) 
226 



ROYCE 

Of them he sacrifices, stands he forth 

With the cosmic onmarch of expanding insight, 

The world-redeeming spirit? Or must the fiend. 

Even for the glory of the greater peace. 

Be beaten down and caged and tamed; to learn 

The meaning of the earth-motive? — Oh, we stand 

Now at the parting of the nation's ways: 

The peace supine, the plausible partnership 

In the huge injustice mask'd with guise of a mind 

Open and judgment poised to wise suspense 

(So rectifying nothing, opening so 

Nought of a nobler future !) ; or at last 

With burst of awful, pent-up sympathies 

The mighty voice, the arm yet young to prove 

By militant consecration wrong-compell'd 

The strength of a right cause — America 

Recorded in resistance: that, perchance 

(All parley with the perjured being cut-off) 

At any sacrifice of common ease, 

At any cost in holy violence, 

Truth-faith and honor and the loyalty 

Which saveth with a savor shall not pass! 



227 



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